Twitters Iranian Hysteria and ‘that’ maintenance
Its seems that the mass hysteria last night forced Twitters host to bow down under pressure and postpone their scheduled maintenance.
“A critical network upgrade must be performed to ensure continued operation of Twitter. In coordination with Twitter, our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight. However, our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran. Tonight’s planned maintenance has been rescheduled to tomorrow between 2-3p PST (1:30a in Iran).
Our partners are taking a huge risk not just for Twitter but also the other services they support worldwide—we commend them for being flexible in what is essentially an inflexible situation. We chose NTT America Enterprise Hosting Services early last year specifically because of their impeccable history of reliability and global perspective. Today’s decision and actions continue to prove why NTT America is such a powerful partner for Twitter.”
While I understand the importance of the Iranians having a voice in the light of their government blocking so many forms of communication, by this time Twitter had just become a mess of hysterical western retweets and misinformation as people got caught up in a moment that had already come and gone. 90 mins wouldn’t have mattered in the grand scheme of things other to deprive them of their Twitter fix which was on large a major world event and much better than “I’m in Starbucks having a coffee”.
The BBC made a correct and more measured statement.
“Some caution needs to be observed however – for example, “tweets” picked up outside Iran and then “re-tweeted” elsewhere can have the potential to turn unsubstantiated rumours into “facts”".
A quick peek at Twitterfall this morning seems to show things have calmed down, or is it that the Americans are asleep? So some form of normality returns. That is until we approach the re-scheduled maintenance period.
