Just Work Please: Mainstream Media Meets the Fail Whale
The online world is an imperfect place. Gmail goes down, chunks of blog posts disappear, and users are deceived on a regular basis. Most of us who spend time online are aware of - and have come to expect - these foibles and hiccups. But now, throngs of mainstream media outlets are entering the fray with a bit of naivete, rushing to use online services that may not yet be ready for prime time - literally. ABC News learned their lesson the hard way during US President Obama's address to Congress.
Leading up to the speech, ABC engaged in a great deal of promotion - anchor Terry Moran referred to it several times as a "Twitter-anza" - around the fact that they would have a live Twitter stream of comments during the Obama speech. Unfortunately for them, the much ballyhooed Twitter stream choked, got stuck, and then failed miserably in the midst of a major broadcast, forcing ABC to pull it from the site.
Now, we know what you're thinking. But this had nothing to do with Twitter. Rather, it had to do with an aptly named server "justworkplease.handbrewed.com." A server that supports a service called SocialSite, which - in their defense - is still "in private alpha." The service probably seemed like a good bet, given that it was also used for the Obama inauguration. But be that as it may, the service is still in private alpha. It's not the safest bet for adding a server-melting Twitter stream to your site.
ABC News learned that lesson in a very public way.
If at First You Don't Succeed
Hopefully, this event doesn't scare ABC - or other news outlets - too far away from trying things like this again. It's online. These things happen.
Other news outlets - like CNN - have learned how to incorporate Twitter into the work that they do - and they've had their own stumbles as well. Properties like Twitter have had their scalability issues, but they have learned how to scale for the sheer volume of users that descend upon sites during events such as these.
ABC may have to weather a bit of snark for it, but it's a great learning experience for them. And a testament to the sheer volume of users who share their opinions via Twitter - and the potential the service holds.
Here's hoping the next endeavor is more successful for them - and the users who expected to share their opinions with other ABC viewers.
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Is there any other service on the web that, every time it fails, it's taken as a sign of how much potential it has? It's like there's a reality distortion field around Twitter.
@Andrew Hedges: Again, to be clear, this wasn't Twitter's failure. It was the failure of the service that was being used to post Twitter to the ABC site.
That said, it doesn't make your comment any less poignant - or less true. ;)
The server name "justworkplease.handbrewed.com" brought back many, ahem, fascinating memories of when I was a lead unix sysadmin for a Huge Telecommunications company. You have to admire such a sense of faith.
I hope to see more integrations of Twitter in modern media.
Data points, Barbara
So if the Twitter staff knows about the server's failure why they keep it. They are a big company, right?
"justworkplease.handbrewed.com."
I think that says it all. :)
It just a small accident happen at he wrong time.the failure system I think already become internal error event Twitter engineer Do not know how to ready for it,
It seems to me that before one tries a system that you know will get a massive amount of traffic, one would, um, I don't know, TEST IT. It's not Twitter guys its the aptly named Justworkplease system.
Andrian Marketing a Florida Marketing Company
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It was an amazing idea though. As you said, I hope this small setback doesn't discourage ABC and other sites from integrating the online social world with mainstream news.
There's nothing cooler than to see mainstream sites recognize the power, and value, that the online social world can provide.
Just to be clear, the thingfo app (and the justworkplease subdomain of handbrewed.com hastily set up to help it handle massive load) have no affiliation with twitter.
The server had been load tested, but not against what abcnews served up (it was fine when it was on the various subpages, but couldn't handle the homepage).
Next time will be much smoother.
I'm continually amazed at mainstream media's choices of social technology service providers. There's a strange alternate universe of providers we've never heard of that manage to sell there services to large media companies. I don't know if it's high-level excec's making tech choices for business reasons or if they let the IT guys run amok and use their buddy's sideproject service but it's rarely a provider anyone familiar with web technology has heard of.
Rick,
thanks for the coverage and the fair defense of Thingfo and our SocialSite product as an early-stage startup.
We are focused on helping sites, brands, and events integrate with the social web and I was thrilled to be included in an event like President Obama's first State of the Union speech on ABC.
I think that ABC news deserves kudos for jumping in to the social media world and engaging with their viewers in such a pro-active manner.
This is just the start for Thingfo and our SocialSite product. We learned a lot and are working to scale the service to handle massive traffic spikes like what we experienced with a live-streamed State of the Union on ABCnews.com.
You know, it's a process. Technology will progress at one rate and our ability to keep up with the digital security and integrity of it all will progress at another rate. The goal is that they keep pace with eachother!
Check out http://www.justaskgemalto.com. I've found interesting and hopeful information there that really puts the question into perspective.
CNN did a phenomenal job by integrating a Facebook on their website on Obama's inauguration day..
Valencio
http://www.EmailCharger.com
I for one am rather excite about what is to come. Cannot wait to see what New Developments are going to occur over the horizon.
Can One imagine, what is going to happen when Obama runs for the second term. Hopefully infrastructure issues will be sorted by then.
Maybe a twitter killer could appear, or maybe Seesmic matures...
The Possibilities are rather endless..
I also hope that this sort of thing doesn't scare away ABC or the other big media giants. What's most impressive to me is that when the service failed, ABC was able to quickly pull it down and adapt.
With CNN's integration of Facebook and ABC pulling in a Twitter stream, I'm definitely excited as to where the future of where consumer-generated statusphere is headed.