Twitter, You’re the Sea Anenome to My Clownfish

The following is a post I wrote for the T3 Blog.

For a brief moment this morning, Facebook and Twitter were both down. I quickly crafted a few succinct, snarky sentences before realizing I had nowhere to post it.

While Facebook seems to be back up and humming again, Twitter has confirmed that the site was forced down, and is being kept down, by an ongoing Denial-Of-Service (DDoS) attack. What’s a DDoS? Imagine 10,000 people descending on your local grocery store, not looking to buy anything, but just stroll up and down the aisles. Everything gets congested, and no one accomplishes anything.

Well, no one except for the people orchestrating the attack. Regardless of your feelings on Twitter the medium, there’s no denying its full-blown media darling status, or the huge bulls-eye that status places on its back. And Twitter’s (surprising) single network provider architecture certainly doesn’t help.

So what does this outage mean for users? Well, a lot and a little. We’ve all seen the stats on low retention rates for users that don’t dive into the conversation quickly–there are a lot of nascent n00bs that I’m sure will completely drop off because of this.

But then again, Australia and much of Japan will sleep right through it. The early-adopting Twitterati will probably enjoy the nostalgia of the Fail Whale. Heck, I’ve read reports of people taking strolls around the block to kill time while it’s down. What crazy times we live in!

So what does this mean for your brand? Well, a lot and a little. Companies like StockTwits and Bit.ly get smothered while sucking on the Fail Whale’s teat. Symbiotic relationships are great as long as there are multiple sea anemones for your Clownfish. No brand should place all of their customer service, marketing, or customer acquisition eggs in the basket of a pre-revenue startup still trying to find its way.

But then again, that’s not a news flash, because you knew that already. Right? Right?