Twitter says outage wasn't hackers or Euro 2012, but a software fault

Twitter fail whale: this outage was so bad that even that went missing

It wasn't hackers, or excitement over Euro 2012, nor avatars using the Gif image format that knocked Twitter over so thoroughly on Thursday that it couldn't even display its famous fail whale, which usually indicates problems at the site.
Instead, the two-hour outage was due to a "cascading bug" in part of the infrastructure powering the social network connecting its 140 million users worldwide, the company's head of engineering Mazen Rawashdeh explains in a blog post.
The Guardian has confirmed separately with trusted senior sources inside Twitter that hackers had nothing to do with the outage – though that did not prevent some claiming to have caused the crash, which ruined the social network's uptime record.
The "fail whale" – indicating that Twitter's servers couldn't keep up with demand – used to be a common sight in the network's early years, but has become progressively less common as the service has grown larger.
Rawashdeh notes that: "For the past six months, we've enjoyed our highest marks for site reliability and stability ever: at least 99.96% and often 99.99%. In simpler terms, this means that in an average 24-hour period, twitter.com has been stable and available to everyone for roughly 23 hours, 59 minutes and 40-ish seconds. Not today [Thursday] though."
The problem was that the bug's effects spread out from their initial location to affect other parts of the system – rather as a power outage in one part of a city can lead to overloads on supply in other parts, and cause a cascade of outages which eventually shuts down the network.
Rawashdeh explains: "At approximately 9am PDT [5pm BST on Thursday], we discovered that Twitter was inaccessible for all web users, and mobile clients were not showing new Tweets. We immediately began to investigate the issue and found that there was a cascading bug in one of our infrastructure components. This wasn't due to a hack or our new office or Euro 2012 or Gif avatars, as some have speculated.
"One of the characteristics of such a [cascading] bug is that it can have a significant impact on all users, worldwide, which was the case today. As soon as we discovered it, we took corrective actions, which included rolling back to a previous stable version of Twitter."
That took about an hour, but a half-hour respite between 10:10 and 10:40 Pacific time then saw the site drop out again, with "full recovery" following at 11:08 PDT.
A hacking group called Ugnazi claimed in emails to several organisations – and later, with no apparent irony, in tweets – to have caused the outage.
The group has given no credible explanation of how it did so, though, and Twitter was quick to dismiss the claim.

Nike's Twitter football advertising campaign banned

The UK's advertising watchdog has banned a Nike Twitter campaign in its original form.

The ruling follows tweets by Manchester United footballer Wayne Rooney and his Arsenal rival Jack Wilshere, posted at the request of the sportswear firm.

The Advertising Standards Authority said that the messages did not make clear they were "identifiable as marketing communications".

It marks the first time the ASA has acted against a Twitter-based campaign.

The authority said it had intervened after receiving a single complaint earlier this year about two tweets - one from each of the sportsmen posted to their personal accounts.

Wayne Rooney's tweet read: "My resolution - to start the year as a champion, and finish it as a champion...#makeitcount gonike.me/makeitcount".

Jack Wilshere had posted "In 2012, I will come back for my club - and be ready for my country gonike.me/Makeitcount".

Rooney has close to 4.8 million followers on his account. The offending tweet - posted on 1 January - has not been deleted.

Wilshere's account was suspended over a fortnight ago after he received personal abuse about an unrelated issue. A spokesman for Arsenal said its midfielder had about 1.3 million followers.

'New territory'

The ASA said the Nike mention in Jack Wilshere's post was "not prominent"

The complainant challenged whether the tweets were "obviously identifiable" as adverts.

Nike responded that the presence of its web address alongside a hashtag with its marketing campaign strapline distinguished the tweets from other personal posts by the players. It added that both sportsmen were well known for having being sponsored by the company.

But the ASA said the elements did not make the tweets "obviously identifiable" as adverts, bearing in mind that many Twitter users scroll through a variety of messages at speed. It added that not all of the social network's users would have been aware of the "make it count" campaign, or the footballers' relationship with Nike.

It suggested that in future firms should add #ad or some other clear indication that a message had been paid for.

"This is relatively new territory for us as a regulator," ASA spokesman Matt Wilson told the BBC.

"People are experimenting and using Twitter to reach consumers, but the same advertising rules apply. It's an ongoing process and this illustrates the care firms must take."

He added that the authority was "relatively relaxed" about the fact that Rooney's tweet had not yet been deleted, bearing in mind it was not at the top of his feed, but added that it expected it to be removed later.

Sourced:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18517668

Improving Traffic to Your Blog

I have had a few issues 'marketing' my Blog, mainly because I am new to this and was unsure of what and / or where to go. 


Within this Blog post I intend to guide you through the same processes which I have found, in a way to help you save time searching the web as I did.


I will only write about the website I use and I have found work, you may find you have your own, if so please leave your suggestions in the comment.


First off, blogging website. I use:
www.blogger.com


How to create a blog on blogger:

Now you blog is set up you have to write a post. When you have composed a post look to the right hand side (remember this is on blogger) and select labels. Here you will type words which are included within your blog. For example, this blog will contain: Improving, Traffic, Blog, Blogger, Pingomatic, etc. You must remember to leave a comma (,) after each label (word).


Now you've got your blog set up and have a post you can use websites which help to share your blog over Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn (www.twitterfeed.com).


Twitterfeed updates your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn account every 30 minutes to an hours without you having to do it yourself every time you write a blog post.




See the link below on how you can set up a Twitterfeed account. But first I recommend you make your own Facebook page (see below the Twitterfeed video)

Click on the following website like to start creating your Facebook like page. http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php


This is a great way to improve traffic. You basically have to send notifications out to your friends, they accept, follow and like your page and you start to become more popular. The more friends, the more likes, the more traffic you'll get on your Blog. 

You may have read information about creating feeds. www.feedburner.com is a Google program that again helps by sending your feed or Blogs to other sources outside of Blogger. 


See the video on how to create a feedburner account:

Pingomatic, this website basically sends your recent completed Blog to a host of other Blogging website. You do have to manually submit your blog to all of the individual website listed.

Okay, this is all I know so far. I will continue to update with new information so please subscribe at the top of my page by submitting your email address. 


If you have any other information or links please leave a comment, I will check it out and update my Blog.