Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[JC Dill]

Roland Perry wrote:
In article <786ba8c0-b534-40ff-9126-1e33bd11c...@americafree.tv>, 
Marshall Eubanks  writes

That's a great idea, use some lame Web 2.0 trend to communicate with
actual real life customers. 


I would assume they figured it was better than just remaining silent.


I'm about to recommend to an organisation that it [a twitter account] 
is better than posting news of an outage on their low-volume website, 
which will get swamped when too many people poll it for news.


What does the team think? 


I don't understand why this is an either/or question.  Why not post to both?

Twitter is a great method of communication, for those that use twitter.  
But some people don't use twitter.  So use every avenue you have.  If 
you have a customer mailing list for announcements, send email.  If you 
have a blog, post to the blog.


I'm in the process of setting up posterous to post to a blog, myspace, 
facebook, and twitter all with one email.  Can't get much simpler than 
that for getting the word out via all the channels (assuming that 
outbound email is working).  (Obviously some businesses don't want/need 
myspace or facebook, but if you use them, post there too.)


http://posterous.com/autopost

Quoting:


How does autoposting work?

Just set up your other accounts here. The next time you post to 
posterous, we will instantly autopost everywhere else.
Facebook profile newsfeeds will be updated each time you post to notify 
your friends. You can also autopost photos to your photo album and embed 
your blog directly in your profile.


Twitter messages will use the title of your post up to 130 characters, 
and then append a shortened post.ly url.


Flickr photos will be put automatically in your photostream. If you 
attach multiple photos, we'll post them all in the order we receive them.


Blogs will be updated with the full content you send us. We'll host your 
images, music and files, so you don't have to lift a finger.




You control where we post.

Just email the right address and we'll do the right thing.
Post Everywhere?p...@posterous.com as usual
Twitter?twit...@posterous.com
Flickr?fli...@posterous.com
Facebook?faceb...@posterous.com
Tumblr?tum...@posterous.com
Any other blog?b...@posterous.com
Posterous only?poster...@posterous.com
Combine them!flickr+twit...@posterous.com

You can also address an email to #{te...@posterous.com and it will post 
to any site where the url contains that text.


#ap...@posterous.com will go to apple.wordpress.com and 
flickr.com/apple, but NOT banana.blogspot.com.





jc

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Roland Perry]

In article <4a4f5e3c.5040...@gmail.com>, JC Dill 
 writes



That's a great idea, use some lame Web 2.0 trend to communicate with
actual real life customers. 


I would assume they figured it was better than just remaining silent.


I'm about to recommend to an organisation that it [a twitter account] 
is better than posting news of an outage on their low-volume website, 
which will get swamped when too many people poll it for news.


What does the team think?


I don't understand why this is an either/or question.  Why not post to both?


Yes, that can be done.

What I'm trying to anticipate is the objection to *also* posting to 
Twitter, which might be raised on the grounds that it's too 
"unofficial", or "unsupported" or something like that.



You control where we post.

Just email the right address and we'll do the right thing.
Post Everywhere?p...@posterous.com as usual
Twitter?twit...@posterous.com
Flickr?fli...@posterous.com
Facebook?faceb...@posterous.com
Tumblr?tum...@posterous.com
Any other blog?b...@posterous.com
Posterous only?poster...@posterous.com
Combine them!flickr+twit...@posterous.com


It's this richness which confuses the ordinary person. How are they to 
know which bit of the scattergun approach is the right one to use? Or 
whether "posting everywhere" has some hidden disadvantage.

--
Roland Perry

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[JC Dill]

Roland Perry wrote:


What I'm trying to anticipate is the objection to *also* posting to 
Twitter, which might be raised on the grounds that it's too 
"unofficial", or "unsupported" or something like that.
Anyone who makes that argument is just showing how little they know 
about Twitter.  It would be like complaining you shouldn't use email 
because "not everyone has email".



You control where we post.

Just email the right address and we'll do the right thing.
Post Everywhere?p...@posterous.com as usual
Twitter?twit...@posterous.com
Flickr?fli...@posterous.com
Facebook?faceb...@posterous.com
Tumblr?tum...@posterous.com
Any other blog?b...@posterous.com
Posterous only?poster...@posterous.com
Combine them!flickr+twit...@posterous.com


It's this richness which confuses the ordinary person. 
That's a lot like saying Perl is too complicated for the ordinary person 
so never use Perl.  :-)
How are they to know which bit of the scattergun approach is the right 
one to use? Or whether "posting everywhere" has some hidden disadvantage.


You can configure it and use it however YOU want.  If it's too confusing 
to use it selectively - sometimes posting in all places, sometimes 
posting in just one place, then configure it for your preferred use and 
use the regular "post everywhere" method each time you post.  For 
network outage announcements it would work perfectly to post to Twitter 
and your company blog(s) in one step.  Bonus - if it can't reach one 
system at least the post gets posted on the other system.  For this 
reason your company may want to setup a shadow blog on one of the free 
blogging platforms, in addition to a blog on the company website.  This 
way if your website is down, the news on the other blog is still out 
there for those that follow the blog to find/read.


The configurable aspects of posterous are most helpful for people who 
have more diverse posting habits - who want to post news to some (but 
not all) channels, who sometimes post chatty things they want to go to 
facebook, sometimes post business things they don't want to go to 
facebook, who post photos they want to go to flickr and facebook but not 
their blog, etc.  If you are active with social networking it would be 
perfect.  I you just use it as an announcement tool, just use the defaults.


jc

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Roland Perry]

In article <4a4f6ef5.9030...@gmail.com>, JC Dill 
 writes


What I'm trying to anticipate is the objection to *also* posting to 
Twitter, which might be raised on the grounds that it's too 
"unofficial", or "unsupported" or something like that.


Anyone who makes that argument is just showing how little they know 
about Twitter.


So that's 98% of the population then...

It would be like complaining you shouldn't use email because "not 
everyone has email".


But email has become respectable, although I still see "people who know 
better" starting speeches with 'of course, ten years ago none of us used 
email, but now' which shows they are very late adopters themselves.



You control where we post.

Just email the right address and we'll do the right thing.
Post Everywhere?p...@posterous.com as usual
Twitter?twit...@posterous.com
Flickr?fli...@posterous.com
Facebook?faceb...@posterous.com
Tumblr?tum...@posterous.com
Any other blog?b...@posterous.com
Posterous only?poster...@posterous.com
Combine them!flickr+twit...@posterous.com


It's this richness which confuses the ordinary person.


That's a lot like saying Perl is too complicated for the ordinary 
person so never use Perl.  :-)


You are confusing the tool with the platform.

How are they to know which bit of the scattergun approach is the 
right  one to use? Or whether "posting everywhere" has some hidden 
disadvantage.


You can configure it and use it however YOU want.


Again, that's about the platform called posterous. How can I explain to 
the School Board that posterous has enough credibility to be used. I 
don't think it has. All they ever hear about other Web2.0 like Facebook 
and Bebo is how dangerous they are for kids. But I'm beginning to think 
that finally maybe Twitter has the right profile for this application.

--
Roland Perry

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Chris Hills]

On 04/07/09 17:07, Roland Perry wrote:

That's the kind of "marketing-led" response I was hoping to hear.

But the UK National Rail system now uses Tweets to tell customers about
disruptions on the trains, and several major UK government departments
and news organisations use it for announcements and "Breaking News".

So has it become "respectable" yet?


When there are open-source equivalents available (e.g. Laconica, 
OpenMicroBlogger - both of which incidentally are compatible since they 
are based upon the OMB spec), I do wonder why a commercial or government 
entity would use a closed-source, non-domestic service.

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[mike]

Roland Perry wrote:
> In article
> <16720fe00907040747k67ca1206kb871420deb5e8...@mail.gmail.com>, Jeffrey
> Lyon  writes
>> Personally, I find it difficult to take Twitter seriously. It seems
>> like more of a kids toy than a business tool. Something like a
>> blogspot account would make a lot more sense.
>
> That's the kind of "marketing-led" response I was hoping to hear.
>
> But the UK National Rail system now uses Tweets to tell customers
> about disruptions on the trains, and several major UK government
> departments and news organisations use it for announcements and
> "Breaking News".
>
> So has it become "respectable" yet?
there are plenty of examples where twitter is being used for useful
notifications. in the sf bay area, there's a user maintained version of
what you describe for our commuter rail. a large example of this is
comcast's customer service (see http://twitter.com/comcastcares) 
personally, i like the twitter idea. i can follow/unfollow at will, i
can set up sms alerts for specific "users" i follow, etc. sure, twitter
had some stability issues, but i think if we're being fair, they've been
very stable of late. sure, twitter might be down at the same time, but
it seems more likely that the website for the provider in question would
be affected and twitter can be updated very quickly using a cell phone
either with a twitter app or simply via sms.

just my $0.02 worth (perhaps $0.03 and perhaps not worth over $0.01)

+m

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Roland Perry]

In article , Chris Hills  
writes

That's the kind of "marketing-led" response I was hoping to hear.

But the UK National Rail system now uses Tweets to tell customers about
disruptions on the trains, and several major UK government departments
and news organisations use it for announcements and "Breaking News".

So has it become "respectable" yet?


When there are open-source equivalents available (e.g. Laconica, 
OpenMicroBlogger - both of which incidentally are compatible since they 
are based upon the OMB spec), I do wonder why a commercial or 
government entity would use a closed-source, non-domestic service.


That's fair comment, but how do you get your customers to install quirky 
niche solutions to what's a once-a-year problem?


They all seem pretty happy using a multitude of other "non-domestic" 
solutions, which probably accounts for 99% of the stuff they have on 
their PCs.


So "not sufficiently mature" we can get away with as an excuse, but 
"Made in America" isn't going to put many people off :)

--
Roland Perry

RE: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Frank Bulk]

When the local power companies uses twitter, then maybe I'll consider using
twitter for our customers.

There's the temptation by some of companies to leverage the latest
technology to appear "cool" and "in tune" with customers, but by far and
large, when something goes down customers either do no nothing, wait, or
call in.  I think the best use of everyone's time is to make sure their call
center/support desk has the capability to post an announcement to those that
call in.  And then make sure something gets posted to the website.  SMS,
Facebook, and Twitter fall in line after all that.

Frank

-Original Message-
From: Roland Perry [mailto:li...@internetpolicyagency.com] 
Sent: Saturday, July 04, 2009 10:38 AM
To: na...@merit.edu
Subject: Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

In article , Chris Hills  
writes
>> That's the kind of "marketing-led" response I was hoping to hear.
>>
>> But the UK National Rail system now uses Tweets to tell customers about
>> disruptions on the trains, and several major UK government departments
>> and news organisations use it for announcements and "Breaking News".
>>
>> So has it become "respectable" yet?
>
>When there are open-source equivalents available (e.g. Laconica, 
>OpenMicroBlogger - both of which incidentally are compatible since they 
>are based upon the OMB spec), I do wonder why a commercial or 
>government entity would use a closed-source, non-domestic service.

That's fair comment, but how do you get your customers to install quirky 
niche solutions to what's a once-a-year problem?

They all seem pretty happy using a multitude of other "non-domestic" 
solutions, which probably accounts for 99% of the stuff they have on 
their PCs.

So "not sufficiently mature" we can get away with as an excuse, but 
"Made in America" isn't going to put many people off :)
-- 
Roland Perry

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Marc Manthey]

Am 04.07.2009 um 22:59 schrieb Frank Bulk:

When the local power companies uses twitter, then maybe I'll  
consider using

twitter for our customers.


well it seems popular

http://www.dell.com/twitter

dell made some money with it too

http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2009/06/11/delloutlet-surpasses-2-million-on-twitter.aspx

:-))




There's the temptation by some of companies to leverage the latest
technology to appear "cool" and "in tune" with customers, but by far  
and
large, when something goes down customers either do no nothing,  
wait, or
call in.  I think the best use of everyone's time is to make sure  
their call
center/support desk has the capability to post an announcement to  
those that
call in.  And then make sure something gets posted to the website.   
SMS,

Facebook, and Twitter fall in line after all that.

Frank

-Original Message-
From: Roland Perry [mailto:li...@internetpolicyagency.com]
Sent: Saturday, July 04, 2009 10:38 AM
To: na...@merit.edu
Subject: Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

In article , Chris Hills 
writes

That's the kind of "marketing-led" response I was hoping to hear.

But the UK National Rail system now uses Tweets to tell customers  
about
disruptions on the trains, and several major UK government  
departments

and news organisations use it for announcements and "Breaking News".

So has it become "respectable" yet?


When there are open-source equivalents available (e.g. Laconica,
OpenMicroBlogger - both of which incidentally are compatible since  
they

are based upon the OMB spec), I do wonder why a commercial or
government entity would use a closed-source, non-domestic service.


That's fair comment, but how do you get your customers to install  
quirky

niche solutions to what's a once-a-year problem?

They all seem pretty happy using a multitude of other "non-domestic"
solutions, which probably accounts for 99% of the stuff they have on
their PCs.

So "not sufficiently mature" we can get away with as an excuse, but
"Made in America" isn't going to put many people off :)
--
Roland Perry





--  
Les enfants teribbles - research / deployment

Marc Manthey
Vogelsangerstrasse 97
D - 50823 Köln - Germany
Vogelsangerstrasse 97
Geo: 50.945554, 6.920293
PGP/GnuPG: 0x1ac02f3296b12b4d
Tel.:0049-221-29891489
Mobil:0049-1577-3329231
web : http://www.let.de

Opinions expressed may not even be mine by the time you read them, and  
certainly don't reflect those of any other entity (legal or otherwise).


Please note that according to the German law on data retention,  
information on every electronic information exchange with me is  
retained for a period of six months.

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Seth Mattinen]

Frank Bulk wrote:

When the local power companies uses twitter, then maybe I'll consider using
twitter for our customers.

There's the temptation by some of companies to leverage the latest
technology to appear "cool" and "in tune" with customers, but by far and
large, when something goes down customers either do no nothing, wait, or
call in.  I think the best use of everyone's time is to make sure their call
center/support desk has the capability to post an announcement to those that
call in.  And then make sure something gets posted to the website.  SMS,
Facebook, and Twitter fall in line after all that.



A plain-text status website and recorded message before the phone tree 
scale quite well in the event of a major problem.


But yeah, Twitter will attract the "what's cool right now" demographic.

~Seth

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Aleksandr Milewski]

On 7/4/09 7:50 AM, Roland Perry wrote:


What I'm trying to anticipate is the objection to *also* posting to
Twitter, which might be raised on the grounds that it's too
"unofficial", or "unsupported" or something like that.


Anecdotal, of course, but I found twitter to be very useful during the 
SF Bay Area fiber cuts a few months back. I was able to fairly quickly 
get reports of who was down (UnitedLayer) and who wasn't (everyone 
else), and made some good contacts, some of whom I've done business with 
since (Cernio).


Set up a twitter account for outage/event notifications, and don't 
*ever* use it for marketing.

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Mark E. Mallett]

On Sat, Jul 04, 2009 at 03:59:48PM -0500, Frank Bulk wrote:
> When the local power companies uses twitter, then maybe I'll consider using
> twitter for our customers.

During the ice storm we had here last winter, the local power
company did just that.  "psnh" "ice storm" "twitter" etc are all
good search terms.

I haven't been following this thread closely, so I dunno if that had
already been mentioned and your remark was a sardonic one. Nevertheless..

-mm-  (probably due for an annual nanog posting)

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Warren Bailey]

Why aren't you all out getting drunk like me?? ;)

- Original Message -
From: Mark E. Mallett 
To: Frank Bulk 
Cc: na...@merit.edu 
Sent: Sat Jul 04 13:12:14 2009
Subject: Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

On Sat, Jul 04, 2009 at 03:59:48PM -0500, Frank Bulk wrote:
> When the local power companies uses twitter, then maybe I'll consider using
> twitter for our customers.

During the ice storm we had here last winter, the local power
company did just that.  "psnh" "ice storm" "twitter" etc are all
good search terms.

I haven't been following this thread closely, so I dunno if that had
already been mentioned and your remark was a sardonic one. Nevertheless..

-mm-  (probably due for an annual nanog posting)

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[JC Dill]

Roland Perry wrote:
In article <4a4f6ef5.9030...@gmail.com>, JC Dill 
 writes


What I'm trying to anticipate is the objection to *also* posting to 
Twitter, which might be raised on the grounds that it's too 
"unofficial", or "unsupported" or something like that.


Anyone who makes that argument is just showing how little they know 
about Twitter.


So that's 98% of the population then...


We aren't talking about the general population.  IMHO anyone in Network 
Operations or NOC management who doesn't know about emerging and cutting 
edge communications is in the wrong job or the wrong industry.


It would be like complaining you shouldn't use email because "not 
everyone has email".


But email has become respectable, although I still see "people who 
know better" starting speeches with 'of course, ten years ago none of 
us used email, but now' which shows they are very late adopters 
themselves.

How many of them are running Internet Networks?



It's this richness which confuses the ordinary person.


That's a lot like saying Perl is too complicated for the ordinary 
person so never use Perl.  :-)


You are confusing the tool with the platform.
Twitter is a tool just like Perl.  You can reach twitter from any 
browser, and most mobile phones.




How are they to know which bit of the scattergun approach is the 
right  one to use? Or whether "posting everywhere" has some hidden 
disadvantage.


You can configure it and use it however YOU want.


Again, that's about the platform called posterous. How can I explain 
to the School Board that posterous has enough credibility to be used. 


You explain that it's a tool.  You configure it and then you give a 
demonstration.  Send a post, then show them how users who keep up with 
local news will find the info depending on what channels they use most 
often to get important info.


Even easier, you make an email address on your system that is an alias 
to posterous.   So they send to "p...@schoolsystem.edu" which .forwards 
out to posterous, which posts to the school blog, myspace, facebook, 
twitter, and any other system you configure.  Show them how a radio 
station can retweet the info and then announce "to get info on school 
closings, follow us on twitter at" and everyone can send the info TO 
the radio station and get the info FROM the radio station quickly and 
easily.



I don't think it has. All they ever hear about other Web2.0 like 
Facebook and Bebo is how dangerous they are for kids. 


Sheesh.  Cars and bikes are far more dangerous for kids than Facebook 
and Bebo.  That's why kids are taught the rules of the road, to always 
wear bike helmets, to always buckle up in the car, and they get driver 
training.


But I'm beginning to think that finally maybe Twitter has the right 
profile for this application.


Again, why limit yourself?  Use all the tools available.

jc

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Stefan]

For DR issues (among many others, of course) think of Twitter as a paging
system of global proportions: not a lot to be said, but if you get the
message right its broadcast and amplification capabilities are unmatched.

-- 
***Stefan
http://twitter.com/netfortius

On Sat, Jul 4, 2009 at 5:19 PM, JC Dill  wrote:

> Roland Perry wrote:
>
>> In article <4a4f6ef5.9030...@gmail.com>, JC Dill 
>> writes
>>
>>  What I'm trying to anticipate is the objection to *also* posting to
 Twitter, which might be raised on the grounds that it's too "unofficial", 
 or
 "unsupported" or something like that.

>>>
>>  Anyone who makes that argument is just showing how little they know about
>>> Twitter.
>>>
>>
>> So that's 98% of the population then...
>>
>
> We aren't talking about the general population.  IMHO anyone in Network
> Operations or NOC management who doesn't know about emerging and cutting
> edge communications is in the wrong job or the wrong industry.
>
>>
>>  It would be like complaining you shouldn't use email because "not
>>> everyone has email".
>>>
>>
>> But email has become respectable, although I still see "people who know
>> better" starting speeches with 'of course, ten years ago none of us used
>> email, but now' which shows they are very late adopters themselves.
>>
> How many of them are running Internet Networks?
>
>
 It's this richness which confuses the ordinary person.

>>>
>>  That's a lot like saying Perl is too complicated for the ordinary person
>>> so never use Perl.  :-)
>>>
>>
>> You are confusing the tool with the platform.
>>
> Twitter is a tool just like Perl.  You can reach twitter from any browser,
> and most mobile phones.
>
>
>>  How are they to know which bit of the scattergun approach is the right
  one to use? Or whether "posting everywhere" has some hidden disadvantage.

>>>
>>> You can configure it and use it however YOU want.
>>>
>>
>> Again, that's about the platform called posterous. How can I explain to
>> the School Board that posterous has enough credibility to be used.
>>
>
> You explain that it's a tool.  You configure it and then you give a
> demonstration.  Send a post, then show them how users who keep up with local
> news will find the info depending on what channels they use most often to
> get important info.
>
> Even easier, you make an email address on your system that is an alias to
> posterous.   So they send to "p...@schoolsystem.edu" which .forwards out
> to posterous, which posts to the school blog, myspace, facebook, twitter,
> and any other system you configure.  Show them how a radio station can
> retweet the info and then announce "to get info on school closings, follow
> us on twitter at" and everyone can send the info TO the radio station
> and get the info FROM the radio station quickly and easily.
>
>
>  I don't think it has. All they ever hear about other Web2.0 like Facebook
>> and Bebo is how dangerous they are for kids.
>>
>
> Sheesh.  Cars and bikes are far more dangerous for kids than Facebook and
> Bebo.  That's why kids are taught the rules of the road, to always wear bike
> helmets, to always buckle up in the car, and they get driver training.
>
>  But I'm beginning to think that finally maybe Twitter has the right
>> profile for this application.
>>
>
> Again, why limit yourself?  Use all the tools available.
>
> jc
>
>

RE: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Frank Bulk]

So does twitter address the mass public, or those who are Web 2.0 literate
or techies?  I'm glad to see that Dell reached two million people, but how
many more people call in or visit its web page every day?

My point in another fork of this thread is that for most people, the
traditional forms of communication are *it*.  I'm not saying that twitter
hasn't been used and found a way to reach the some portion of the population
-- the traditional methods (announcement at top of phone tree & note on
homepage) should be maintained and as one more additional way to
communication.  I think you mentioned that yourself a few posts ago. =)

Frank

-Original Message-
From: JC Dill [mailto:jcdill.li...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Saturday, July 04, 2009 5:20 PM
Cc: na...@merit.edu
Subject: Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

Roland Perry wrote:
> In article <4a4f6ef5.9030...@gmail.com>, JC Dill 
>  writes
>
>>> What I'm trying to anticipate is the objection to *also* posting to 
>>> Twitter, which might be raised on the grounds that it's too 
>>> "unofficial", or "unsupported" or something like that.
>
>> Anyone who makes that argument is just showing how little they know 
>> about Twitter.
>
> So that's 98% of the population then...

We aren't talking about the general population.  IMHO anyone in Network 
Operations or NOC management who doesn't know about emerging and cutting 
edge communications is in the wrong job or the wrong industry.
>
>> It would be like complaining you shouldn't use email because "not 
>> everyone has email".
>
> But email has become respectable, although I still see "people who 
> know better" starting speeches with 'of course, ten years ago none of 
> us used email, but now' which shows they are very late adopters 
> themselves.
How many of them are running Internet Networks?

>>>
>>> It's this richness which confuses the ordinary person.
>
>> That's a lot like saying Perl is too complicated for the ordinary 
>> person so never use Perl.  :-)
>
> You are confusing the tool with the platform.
Twitter is a tool just like Perl.  You can reach twitter from any 
browser, and most mobile phones.

>
>>> How are they to know which bit of the scattergun approach is the 
>>> right  one to use? Or whether "posting everywhere" has some hidden 
>>> disadvantage.
>>
>> You can configure it and use it however YOU want.
>
> Again, that's about the platform called posterous. How can I explain 
> to the School Board that posterous has enough credibility to be used. 

You explain that it's a tool.  You configure it and then you give a 
demonstration.  Send a post, then show them how users who keep up with 
local news will find the info depending on what channels they use most 
often to get important info.

Even easier, you make an email address on your system that is an alias 
to posterous.   So they send to "p...@schoolsystem.edu" which .forwards 
out to posterous, which posts to the school blog, myspace, facebook, 
twitter, and any other system you configure.  Show them how a radio 
station can retweet the info and then announce "to get info on school 
closings, follow us on twitter at" and everyone can send the info TO 
the radio station and get the info FROM the radio station quickly and 
easily.


> I don't think it has. All they ever hear about other Web2.0 like 
> Facebook and Bebo is how dangerous they are for kids. 

Sheesh.  Cars and bikes are far more dangerous for kids than Facebook 
and Bebo.  That's why kids are taught the rules of the road, to always 
wear bike helmets, to always buckle up in the car, and they get driver 
training.

> But I'm beginning to think that finally maybe Twitter has the right 
> profile for this application.

Again, why limit yourself?  Use all the tools available.

jc

RE: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Tomas L. Byrnes]

>-Original Message-
>From: Frank Bulk [mailto:frnk...@iname.com]
>Sent: Saturday, July 04, 2009 4:51 PM
>To: 'JC Dill'
>Cc: na...@merit.edu
>Subject: RE: Using twitter as an outage notification
>
>So does twitter address the mass public, 

[TLB:] 
The whole point of Twitter is that it works with SMS.


>
>My point in another fork of this thread is that for most people, the
>traditional forms of communication are *it*.  I'm not saying that
>twitter
>hasn't been used and found a way to reach the some portion of the
>population
>-- the traditional methods (announcement at top of phone tree & note on
>homepage) should be maintained and as one more additional way to
>communication.  I think you mentioned that yourself a few posts ago. =)
>
>Frank
>
[TLB:] I think everyone agrees it's not an "Either/Or". 

The argument that Twitter is a good, inexpensive, way to mass
communicate operational issues with those that are able to use it, is
kind of axiomatic.


I'm not, in general, a fan of Twitter. To me, twits are those in my
killfile (yes, I know they call it "tweets"), however, as a way of using
Other People's Money to reduce your OPEX while improving CSI, it seems
like a no-brainer to me.

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Michael Painter]

- Original Message - 
From: "Frank Bulk"

Sent: Saturday, July 04, 2009 10:59 AM
Subject: RE: Using twitter as an outage notification



When the local power companies uses twitter, then maybe I'll consider using
twitter for our customers.

There's the temptation by some of companies to leverage the latest
technology to appear "cool" and "in tune" with customers, but by far and
large, when something goes down customers either do no nothing, wait, or
call in.  I think the best use of everyone's time is to make sure their call
center/support desk has the capability to post an announcement to those that
call in.  And then make sure something gets posted to the website.  SMS,
Facebook, and Twitter fall in line after all that.

Frank



I thought this was interesting:

"Bonnie Smalley has Internet bragging rights: She has been blocked by Twitter for hand-typing too many tweets in an hour. 
They thought she was a computer program made to spew spam.
Ms. Smalley, it turns out, is a 100 percent human customer service representative for Comcast. She is one of 10 
representatives who reach out to customers through social networks, rather than waiting for them to find Comcast's support 
site."


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/technology/personaltech/02basics.html?partner=rss&emc=rss 

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Roland Perry]

In article 
aatbsgaabauldg0ewkrsz9bd0db8+e2aqaaa...@iname.com>, Frank Bulk 
 writes

When the local power companies uses twitter, then maybe I'll consider using
twitter for our customers.


That's a poor example as far as the UK's concerned. You can't get 
information from the power company for days if you are a domestic 
customer.



There's the temptation by some of companies to leverage the latest
technology to appear "cool" and "in tune" with customers, but by far and
large, when something goes down customers either do no nothing, wait, or
call in.  I think the best use of everyone's time is to make sure their call
center/support desk has the capability to post an announcement to those that
call in.


It's a High School. They don't have a "support desk" (or more than 
handful of phone lines [1]). Even the local radio station can't cope 
with one call per school asking them to broadcast the news that they 
have closed due to bad weather.



And then make sure something gets posted to the website.


Unfortunately, the number of students polling the website for news means 
it can't cope with the traffic. I don't believe they can justify paying 
more for better web hosting, just to manage this once-a-year half hour 
event.


--
Roland Perry

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Roland Perry]

In article <4a4fc4f3.2010...@rollernet.us>, Seth Mattinen 
 writes

Twitter will attract the "what's cool right now" demographic.


But has it gone from "cool" to "useful" (for this kind of application), 
in a way that Facebook and other such sites haven't?


I remember an employer of mine when I was trying to persuade him to 
build a modem into a PC so people could exchange what we'd now call 
emails, and he said "Roland, come back and ask me again, when I can pay 
your wages through that modem thing".


Unfortunately I didn't get the opportunity, as I left there twenty years 
ago, and Paypal wasn't invented until about ten years ago.

--
Roland Perry

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Adrian Chadd]

On Sun, Jul 05, 2009, Roland Perry wrote:

> Unfortunately, the number of students polling the website for news means 
> it can't cope with the traffic. I don't believe they can justify paying 
> more for better web hosting, just to manage this once-a-year half hour 
> event.

Is Twitter making a profit or not?

This discussion about (ab)using a publicly available message system which
isn't currently being charged for would makes me worried^Wamused as hell.

(Not that I can't see possible ways of making money off twitter - especially
if you offer reliable message dissemination services to companies for a fee,
but AFAIK they aren't doing this at the moment.)



Adrian

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Roland Perry]

In article <4a4fd58b.2000...@gmail.com>, JC Dill 
 writes
Even easier, you make an email address on your system that is an alias 
to posterous.   So they send to "p...@schoolsystem.edu" which .forwards 
out to posterous, which posts to the school blog, myspace, facebook, 
twitter,


It doesn't have any of those, that's the point really.

Is twitter the one I should get them started with first?


Show them how a radio station can retweet the info


It's have to be automated as there are hundreds to do over a periods of 
a few tens of minutes (the schools don't generally announce they are 
closing until they see how many teachers made it to work, and that's not 
long before they have to open - students get marked down for being late, 
even in bad weather, so can't delay setting out from home; it's an 
interesting operational model.)


and then announce "to get info on school closings, follow us on twitter 
at"


http://twitter.com/trentfmnews (but it's not exactly high traffic)

and everyone can send the info TO the radio station and get the info 
FROM the radio station quickly and easily.


The radio station would probably be overwhelmed if they got much more 
than one tweet per school.


I don't think it has. All they ever hear about other Web2.0 like 
Facebook and Bebo is how dangerous they are for kids.


Sheesh.  Cars and bikes are far more dangerous for kids than Facebook 
and Bebo.  That's why kids are taught the rules of the road, to always 
wear bike helmets, to always buckle up in the car, and they get driver 
training.


Part of my day job is getting that sort of training about using the 
Internet, into schools. So far most of them have only got as far as 
teaching the students how to operate Powerpoint (yes I know that's not 
an Internet application), and installing filters to try to keep them off 
YouTube during lessons.


But I'm beginning to think that finally maybe Twitter has the right 
profile for this application.


Again, why limit yourself?  Use all the tools available.


One step at a time :)
--
Roland Perry

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Roland Dobbins]

On Jul 5, 2009, at 5:12 PM, Adrian Chadd wrote:


Is Twitter making a profit or not?


The other consideration is scalability and reliability.  Twitter has  
been subject to numerous feature disablements due to capacity issues,  
as well as complete outages.  Furthermore, Twitter does not appear to  
be deployed in a distributed, highly-available architecture.


The Twitter *aggregation/attention model* is what is of great  
interest, any merits of the specific service aside.


---
Roland Dobbins  // 

Unfortunately, inefficiency scales really well.

   -- Kevin Lawton

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Marshall Eubanks]

On Jul 5, 2009, at 6:12 AM, Adrian Chadd wrote:


On Sun, Jul 05, 2009, Roland Perry wrote:

Unfortunately, the number of students polling the website for news  
means
it can't cope with the traffic. I don't believe they can justify  
paying
more for better web hosting, just to manage this once-a-year half  
hour

event.


Is Twitter making a profit or not?



The word on the street is that they have not yet "found a revenue  
model". In other words,
they make no money. They seem very dot com 1.0 unconcerned with this.  
That obviously cannot last.


The speculation on how to fix that tend to be either focused advertising

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_ultimate_twitter_revenue_model.php

ecommerce

http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/2009/6/22/A-real-Twitter-revenue-model---gasp-_731.aspx

or Google type data mining models (you can detect trends very
quickly on twitter). These can obviously be combined; who knows if  
they would be sufficient.


This discussion about (ab)using a publicly available message system  
which
isn't currently being charged for would makes me worried^Wamused as  
hell.




I don't think it violates the terms of use. But, yes, as I said  
before, this is
a service that goes down. I would not rely on it as the only way to  
communicate.


(Not that I can't see possible ways of making money off twitter -  
especially
if you offer reliable message dissemination services to companies  
for a fee,

but AFAIK they aren't doing this at the moment.)




No. I haven't even heard this mentioned as a possible revenue model.  
Good idea, though.


Regards
Marshall




Adrian





Regards
Marshall Eubanks
CEO / AmericaFree.TV

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Marc Manthey]

Is Twitter making a profit or not?


The other consideration is scalability and reliability.  Twitter has  
been subject to numerous feature disablements due to capacity  
issues, as well as complete outages.  Furthermore, Twitter does not  
appear to be deployed in a distributed, highly-available architecture.


The Twitter *aggregation/attention model* is what is of great  
interest, any merits of the specific service aside.


exactly, its like VHS versus BETAMAX , not the better system wins,its  
just better maketing and popularity.


just my 2 cents


http://identi.ca/macbroadcast/  < the opensource distributed  
alternative  > http://laconi.ca/


--  
Les enfants teribbles - research / deployment

Marc Manthey
Vogelsangerstrasse 97
D - 50823 Köln - Germany
Vogelsangerstrasse 97
Geo: 50.945554, 6.920293
PGP/GnuPG: 0x1ac02f3296b12b4d
Tel.:0049-221-29891489
Mobil:0049-1577-3329231
web : http://www.let.de

Opinions expressed may not even be mine by the time you read them, and  
certainly don't reflect those of any other entity (legal or otherwise).


Please note that according to the German law on data retention,  
information on every electronic information exchange with me is  
retained for a period of six months.

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Steve Pirk]

On Sun, 5 Jul 2009, Roland Perry wrote:

There's the temptation by some of companies to leverage the latest
technology to appear "cool" and "in tune" with customers, but by far and
large, when something goes down customers either do no nothing, wait, or
call in.  I think the best use of everyone's time is to make sure their 
call
center/support desk has the capability to post an announcement to those 
that

call in.


It's a High School. They don't have a "support desk" (or more than handful of 
phone lines [1]). Even the local radio station can't cope with one call per 
school asking them to broadcast the news that they have closed due to bad 
weather.


If your resources are that tight, do what our local school district 
did, mandate that all bus schedules will only be available on the web 
site.



And then make sure something gets posted to the website.


Unfortunately, the number of students polling the website for news means it 
can't cope with the traffic. I don't believe they can justify paying more for 
better web hosting, just to manage this once-a-year half hour event.




Roland, sounds like you should have a few "public service" 
announcements saying that school closures will be delivered via a 
certain twitter username. Also send a flyer home with the students.


The radio station can pick up the twitter feed like everyone else, and 
announce closures. That is the way a certain group of people are doing 
it in the middle east right now, word gets around and word gets 
out... In your case, the community will know quickly, all from a 
couple of people logging into twitter and sending a few messages. 
Sounds like a simple, ideal solution given your budget constraints.


--
steve

RE: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Joe Blanchard]

My gosh,  Ok, how about we use Facebook, myspace and the other
assorted community websites/services, no better
yet lets use AOL! 

Can we kill this thread please (for those that are still on AOL that's PLZ) 

This list is for professional content, not for boasting about high school
websties/services that will die
out in the next year or so.  



 

> -Original Message-
> From: Steve Pirk [mailto:or...@pirk.com] 
> Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2009 6:43 AM
> To: Roland Perry
> Cc: na...@merit.edu
> Subject: Re: Using twitter as an outage notification
> 
> On Sun, 5 Jul 2009, Roland Perry wrote:
> >> There's the temptation by some of companies to leverage the latest 
> >> technology to appear "cool" and "in tune" with customers, 
bunch of $h1t, bunch of $h1t...
bunch of $h1t, bunch of $h1t...
bunch of $h1t, bunch of $h1t...
bunch of $h1t, bunch of $h1t...
bunch of $h1t, bunch of $h1t...
bunch of $h1t, bunch of $h1t...
bunch of $h1t, bunch of $h1t...
bunch of $h1t, bunch of $h1t...
bunch of $h1t, bunch of $h1t...

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Marshall Eubanks]

On Jul 5, 2009, at 6:23 AM, Roland Perry wrote:

In article <4a4fd58b.2000...@gmail.com>, JC Dill > writes
Even easier, you make an email address on your system that is an  
alias to posterous.   So they send to "p...@schoolsystem.edu"  
which .forwards out to posterous, which posts to the school blog,  
myspace, facebook, twitter,


It doesn't have any of those, that's the point really.

Is twitter the one I should get them started with first?



I would say this partially would depend on how and what you want to  
communicate. If there is just going to be
one pronouncement per day (the school is up / down / delayed), then  
facebook and / or myspace would suggest themselves.
They are to date free, and the students will know what they are. I  
would start with facebook.


If you look at the #AuthorizeNet situation, there was a lot of back  
and forth. Will the schools have a need for
back and forth ? If they do, then, yes, twitter might be part of the  
solution and you might start with it. It's free, cross-platform, and  
you can also assume that the students (if not their parents) know what  
it is. This might also be a good for teachers and

the school to communicate, say by DM (direct messages).

Note that this will take people answering questions / dealing with  
issues on twitter. Specifically, someone would have

to  pay attention
to it during any quasi-emergency period - do the schools have such a  
person ?


Also, if the school looses power in a storm, is there a backup means  
of getting to the Internet ?


Regards
Marshall





Show them how a radio station can retweet the info


It's have to be automated as there are hundreds to do over a periods  
of a few tens of minutes (the schools don't generally announce they  
are closing until they see how many teachers made it to work, and  
that's not long before they have to open - students get marked down  
for being late, even in bad weather, so can't delay setting out from  
home; it's an interesting operational model.)


and then announce "to get info on school closings, follow us on  
twitter at"


http://twitter.com/trentfmnews (but it's not exactly high traffic)

and everyone can send the info TO the radio station and get the  
info FROM the radio station quickly and easily.


The radio station would probably be overwhelmed if they got much  
more than one tweet per school.


I don't think it has. All they ever hear about other Web2.0 like  
Facebook and Bebo is how dangerous they are for kids.


Sheesh.  Cars and bikes are far more dangerous for kids than  
Facebook and Bebo.  That's why kids are taught the rules of the  
road, to always wear bike helmets, to always buckle up in the car,  
and they get driver training.


Part of my day job is getting that sort of training about using the  
Internet, into schools. So far most of them have only got as far as  
teaching the students how to operate Powerpoint (yes I know that's  
not an Internet application), and installing filters to try to keep  
them off YouTube during lessons.


But I'm beginning to think that finally maybe Twitter has the  
right profile for this application.


Again, why limit yourself?  Use all the tools available.


One step at a time :)
--
Roland Perry




Regards
Marshall Eubanks
CEO / AmericaFree.TV

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Matthew Palmer]

On Sun, Jul 05, 2009 at 11:01:43AM +0100, Roland Perry wrote:
[snow day notifications]
> Unfortunately, the number of students polling the website for news means  
> it can't cope with the traffic. I don't believe they can justify paying  
> more for better web hosting, just to manage this once-a-year half hour  
> event.

There are web hosting providers whose 18c/year hosting plans can't handle a
few thousand requests to a static page over a period of maybe 15 minutes
without falling over?  The mind boggles.

- Matt

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Martin List-Petersen]

Aleksandr Milewski wrote:
> On 7/4/09 7:50 AM, Roland Perry wrote:
> 
>> What I'm trying to anticipate is the objection to *also* posting to
>> Twitter, which might be raised on the grounds that it's too
>> "unofficial", or "unsupported" or something like that.
> 
> Anecdotal, of course, but I found twitter to be very useful during the
> SF Bay Area fiber cuts a few months back. I was able to fairly quickly
> get reports of who was down (UnitedLayer) and who wasn't (everyone
> else), and made some good contacts, some of whom I've done business with
> since (Cernio).
> 
> Set up a twitter account for outage/event notifications, and don't
> *ever* use it for marketing.
> 

I'd agree on this one.

We use it for outage/event/coverage expansion notifications.

Originally, we thought a blog style website somewhere outside our
network was the way to go, but twitter has so many more angles, like RSS
feed capability, an API to integrate it somewhere on your website and
mobile clients.
On top of that, you can update it via SMS if needed.

The hype some people are pushing twitter on, I can't follow, but for
those type of notifications, it's perfect, also because it's not part of
your own infrastructure.

Kind regards,
Martin List-Petersen
-- 
Airwire - Ag Nascadh Pobail an Iarthair
http://www.airwire.ie
Phone: 091-865 968

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Roland Perry]

In article <0d357934-85de-4935-8f58-02f5fcc1d...@americafree.tv>, 
Marshall Eubanks  writes


I would say this partially would depend on how and what you want to 
communicate. If there is just going to be
one pronouncement per day (the school is up / down / delayed), then 
facebook and / or myspace would suggest themselves.


There's going to be a handful a year. Such as "school closed today due 
to snow". or "remember - school closed today for staff training" [a 
curious British phenomenon].


They are to date free, and the students will know what they are. I 
would start with facebook.


If you look at the #AuthorizeNet situation, there was a lot of back and 
forth. Will the schools have a need for

back and forth ?


No, if the school's closed, it's closed. No debate allowed.

Note that this will take people answering questions / dealing with 
issues on twitter. Specifically, someone would have to  pay attention 
to it during any quasi-emergency period - do the schools have such a 
person ?


Such a person could be designated.


Also, if the school looses power in a storm,


Schools in urban areas here very rarely lose power in storms. All the 
cables are underground. Of course, losing power would be another excuse 
to close the school :)



is there a backup means  of getting to the Internet ?


A laptop with a 3g modem would suffice, or for Twitter someone with a 
suitably configure mobile phone.

--
Roland Perry

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Roland Perry]

In article <20090705101237.gc14...@skywalker.creative.net.au>, Adrian 
Chadd  writes

Is Twitter making a profit or not?

This discussion about (ab)using a publicly available message system which
isn't currently being charged for would makes me worried^Wamused as hell.


I've seen debates about whether it's possible to monetise Twitter. 
Operationally, it's an issue if they fail financially, but I don't think 
the investment in setting up an account is large enough to worry about.


Counter-intuitively, I've probably seen more subscription-based services 
fail, than free ones.

--
Roland Perry

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Roland Perry]

In article <9589b202-ed92-4c49-98ee-eebaa43c8...@americafree.tv>, 
Marshall Eubanks  writes
as I said  before, this is a service that goes down. I would not rely 
on it as the only way to  communicate.


I'd be proposing it as an additional way to communicate[1], but people 
could come to rely upon it.


[1] the present system seems to be those few students who can get 
through to the school then SMS the news to their friends.

--
Roland Perry

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Roland Perry]

In article , Steve Pirk 
 writes


It's a High School. They don't have a "support desk" (or more than 
handful of  phone lines [1]). Even the local radio station can't cope 
with one call per  school asking them to broadcast the news that they 
have closed due to bad  weather.


If your resources are that tight, do what our local school district 
did, mandate that all bus schedules will only be available on the web 
site.


The school doesn't have any buses. About 80% of the students walk (the 
average distance maybe a little over a mile) and most of the rest get 
taken in their parents car.


Roland, sounds like you should have a few "public service" 
announcements saying that school closures will be delivered via a 
certain twitter username.


That's what my objective is - to build a sturdy enough case for the 
school to have a twitter account to use during these events.



Also send a flyer home with the students.


Only about half of those ever reach home (no-one knows where they end 
up, but it's probably the same place as all those lost Biros).


But if the school had a twitter account I'm sure the news would spread 
rapidly. Most of the students spend hours online every day, even if the 
school doesn't.


The radio station can pick up the twitter feed like everyone else, and 
announce closures. That is the way a certain group of people are doing 
it in the middle east right now, word gets around and word gets out... 
In your case, the community will know quickly, all from a couple of 
people logging into twitter and sending a few messages. Sounds like a 
simple, ideal solution given your budget constraints.


I hope so.
--
Roland Perry

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Roland Perry]

In article <20090705113248.gp1...@hezmatt.org>, Matthew Palmer 
 writes

There are web hosting providers whose 18c/year hosting plans can't handle a
few thousand requests to a static page over a period of maybe 15 minutes
without falling over?  The mind boggles.


Apparently so. Of course, they could be deliberately throttled, rather 
than run on inherently low-bandwidth kit. Which raises the issue of 
whether such throttling schemes should take account of short bursts.

--
Roland Perry

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Roland Perry]

In article <4a50a3c9.3080...@airwire.ie>, Martin List-Petersen 
 writes


for those type of notifications, it's perfect, also because it's not 
part of your own infrastructure.


From an operational resilience point of view, that's a very important 
feature.

--
Roland Perry

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Martin List-Petersen]

Roland Perry wrote:
> In article <4a50a3c9.3080...@airwire.ie>, Martin List-Petersen
>  writes
> 
>> for those type of notifications, it's perfect, also because it's not
>> part of your own infrastructure.
> 
> From an operational resilience point of view, that's a very important
> feature.


It's the main reason for choosing something like twitter, blogspot etc.
If you want to communicate an outage, it might be as bad as your
infrastructure is gone, even though that you'd might hope, that you've
designed your network in a way, that it never happens.

But let's just take the scenario, where some event basically whipes your
ASN of the face of global BGP :) . It doesn't have to be a physical
outage, that causes it.

Talking about monetizing twitter, there's a very simple approach, just
based on this type of service:

Service Providers, Carriers etc., that use Twitter can pay a monthly fee
for the service and twitter sends them responses, private messages etc.
by more organized means.

Just my 2c on another approach, but I can see that happening and I
wouldn't mind paying a few bob for the service.

As for some responses on this tread and also some reactions from a few
customers (childish, "my kids use twitter, i don't", etc.):

- some people think twitter is a hype, that's ignorant in my eyes. Sure
it's overhyped by some, it doesn't make twitter a hype.

- some people think twitter is a child's toy. It can be used as such,
but that's not it's primary function or intention.

- some people say it's the next Google. I can pretty much see, where
that idea comes from. Real time search, while Google didn't pick very
fast up on the fires (Seattle, Toronto), you'd be able to find tweets on
them within minutes on Twitter. It would take hours before any of it
appears on Google.

- and as the last thing, with companies like AT&T, authorize.net and
various others using it for service notifications or interaction with
customers, my above point actually is just even more valid.

Calling it a lame web 2.0 is pretty much off, when it's actually used
for something sensible.

Just my 2c

Kind regards,
Martin List-Petersen
-- 
Airwire - Ag Nascadh Pobail an Iarthair
http://www.airwire.ie
Phone: 091-865 968

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Roland Perry]

In article <4a50acb7.6070...@airwire.ie>, Martin List-Petersen 
 writes

Calling it a lame web 2.0 is pretty much off, when it's actually used
for something sensible.


I seem to be trying to find the middle ground between members of the 
public who think "The Internet isn't appropriate because they didn't 
teach it to me in college 20 years ago" and those who say "Web 2.0 isn't 
appropriate because they didn't teach it to me in college 5 years ago".


Shouldn't we at least be giving it the benefit of the doubt?
--
Roland Perry

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Martin List-Petersen]

Roland Perry wrote:
> In article <4a50acb7.6070...@airwire.ie>, Martin List-Petersen
>  writes
>> Calling it a lame web 2.0 is pretty much off, when it's actually used
>> for something sensible.
> 
> I seem to be trying to find the middle ground between members of the
> public who think "The Internet isn't appropriate because they didn't
> teach it to me in college 20 years ago" and those who say "Web 2.0 isn't
> appropriate because they didn't teach it to me in college 5 years ago".
> 
> Shouldn't we at least be giving it the benefit of the doubt?


Since when has, what has been teached in college ever been a defining
standard for what is happening on the internet or what the trend in
computing is ?

A lot of people never touch Linux during studies, and don't get any of
it in college, however are faced with it in the corporate or public world.

Kind regards,
Martin List-Petersen
-- 
Airwire - Ag Nascadh Pobail an Iarthair
http://www.airwire.ie
Phone: 091-865 968

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[JC Dill]

Roland Perry wrote:

There's the temptation by some of companies to leverage the latest
technology to appear "cool" and "in tune" with customers, but by far and
large, when something goes down customers either do no nothing, wait, or
call in.  I think the best use of everyone's time is to make sure 
their call
center/support desk has the capability to post an announcement to 
those that

call in.


It's a High School. They don't have a "support desk" (or more than 
handful of phone lines [1]). Even the local radio station can't cope 
with one call per school asking them to broadcast the news that they 
have closed due to bad weather.



And then make sure something gets posted to the website.


Unfortunately, the number of students polling the website for news 
means it can't cope with the traffic. 
Really?  Um, wow.  How big is this school?  Is the webserver on an ISDN 
line?
I don't believe they can justify paying more for better web hosting, 
just to manage this once-a-year half hour event.
This is a case where it makes *perfect* sense to offload emergency 
notifications to another, larger system such as twitter, *as well as* 
post to the school website (ideally via a blog, so you can use posterus 
to do both actions in one email).  There's no fee, the cost to "set 
up"[1] is your time to securely configure a posterus account and a list 
to send to posterus (see below) and then to send an announcement post to 
posterus (and thus post on the school blog and on twitter) and to send 
an email to all students and parents notifying them so they can follow 
the school's announcement feed on twitter.


jc

[1] To setup: create an announcement mailing list with a name like 
post7204...@school.edu - the name is kept private.  The mailing list 
will send to posterus (and yourself - do NOT use this list to send to 
regular users - if you want to do that make a different list, a public 
list).  This prevents students from sending out snow day emails by 
forging the school's secretary's email address and sending to posterus 
themselves - they would need to guess the name of the mailing list and 
send "from" that name to posterus to forge a snow day email.


For even more security, set the list to no approved posters.  The people 
who are authorized to send out the announcement will be authorized to 
*approve* posts from non-members (who are everyone).  Anyone on the 
school staff can post (but still, keep the address private, only 
distribute it to those who need to know!).  The posts are held for 
moderation and are sent to the people who can approve, and they have to 
click on the approval link and approve the post before it gets 
distributed.  Test this system with the people who will use it, so that 
they understand what happens if they are the first one to click on the 
approval link, and what happens if someone else is first (no messages 
left to approve).  Also, make sure they can remember the password for 
moderating the private email list - the whole thing grinds to a halt if 
none of them can remember their password at 4 am when they try to send a 
snowday announcement and it remains stuck in the distribution list and 
never gets out and posted.  The usual system people use to remember an 
infrequently used password (of having a password on a note by the 
computer in the office) doesn't work at 4 am when everyone is at home.


jc

RE: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Skywing]

Hmm... doesn't that kind of defeat the point of using Twitter instead of your 
own infrastructure to begin with, aside from adding another (Posterous) single 
point of failure for all your communication mechanisms?

Perhaps it is not so important for snow days vs. outage situations, but it 
seems to me like it would be simpler and more reliable to go directly to the 
source and not use Posterous.

(Besides, I suspect the chances are reasonable that between mail/www/Twitter, 
you're going to have a low set of users in the other social networking sites 
crowd who don't have any overlap to begin with.  Diminishing returns?)

- S

-Original Message-
From: JC Dill 
Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2009 08:18
Cc: na...@merit.edu 
Subject: Re: Using twitter as an outage notification


Roland Perry wrote:
>> There's the temptation by some of companies to leverage the latest
>> technology to appear "cool" and "in tune" with customers, but by far and
>> large, when something goes down customers either do no nothing, wait, or
>> call in.  I think the best use of everyone's time is to make sure
>> their call
>> center/support desk has the capability to post an announcement to
>> those that
>> call in.
>
> It's a High School. They don't have a "support desk" (or more than
> handful of phone lines [1]). Even the local radio station can't cope
> with one call per school asking them to broadcast the news that they
> have closed due to bad weather.
>
>> And then make sure something gets posted to the website.
>
> Unfortunately, the number of students polling the website for news
> means it can't cope with the traffic.
Really?  Um, wow.  How big is this school?  Is the webserver on an ISDN
line?
> I don't believe they can justify paying more for better web hosting,
> just to manage this once-a-year half hour event.
This is a case where it makes *perfect* sense to offload emergency
notifications to another, larger system such as twitter, *as well as*
post to the school website (ideally via a blog, so you can use posterus
to do both actions in one email).  There's no fee, the cost to "set
up"[1] is your time to securely configure a posterus account and a list
to send to posterus (see below) and then to send an announcement post to
posterus (and thus post on the school blog and on twitter) and to send
an email to all students and parents notifying them so they can follow
the school's announcement feed on twitter.

jc

[1] To setup: create an announcement mailing list with a name like
post7204...@school.edu - the name is kept private.  The mailing list
will send to posterus (and yourself - do NOT use this list to send to
regular users - if you want to do that make a different list, a public
list).  This prevents students from sending out snow day emails by
forging the school's secretary's email address and sending to posterus
themselves - they would need to guess the name of the mailing list and
send "from" that name to posterus to forge a snow day email.

For even more security, set the list to no approved posters.  The people
who are authorized to send out the announcement will be authorized to
*approve* posts from non-members (who are everyone).  Anyone on the
school staff can post (but still, keep the address private, only
distribute it to those who need to know!).  The posts are held for
moderation and are sent to the people who can approve, and they have to
click on the approval link and approve the post before it gets
distributed.  Test this system with the people who will use it, so that
they understand what happens if they are the first one to click on the
approval link, and what happens if someone else is first (no messages
left to approve).  Also, make sure they can remember the password for
moderating the private email list - the whole thing grinds to a halt if
none of them can remember their password at 4 am when they try to send a
snowday announcement and it remains stuck in the distribution list and
never gets out and posted.  The usual system people use to remember an
infrequently used password (of having a password on a note by the
computer in the office) doesn't work at 4 am when everyone is at home.

jc

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Roland Perry]

In article <4a50bb87.8000...@airwire.ie>, Martin List-Petersen 
 writes



Calling it a lame web 2.0 is pretty much off, when it's actually used
for something sensible.


I seem to be trying to find the middle ground between members of the
public who think "The Internet isn't appropriate because they didn't
teach it to me in college 20 years ago" and those who say "Web 2.0 isn't
appropriate because they didn't teach it to me in college 5 years ago".

Shouldn't we at least be giving it the benefit of the doubt?


Since when has, what has been teached in college ever been a defining
standard for what is happening on the internet or what the trend in
computing is ?


It shouldn't be, but I'm guessing this is where much of the conservatism 
is coming from.


--
Roland Perry

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Benjamin Billon]

I agree.
It seems (I didn't look for solid proofs of that) twitter went down when 
MJ's die was revealed. I don't want to know why (not enough cloud 
computing stuff?), but I still believe there is maybe not always an 
ultimate solution to all problems.


Twitter and its friends may sometimes help, that's for sure. But at an 
higher level, we don't need the info right here right now, we only want 
the issues to be solved. Still meaning the DC/ISP/hosting company has to 
keep a straight and up-to-date list of customers in order to contact 
them directly if necessary (but this is not part of the problems' 
resolution, this is commercial/relational matter), which I never saw in 
real life.


Furthermore, I personnaly don't use Twitter and as few "social 
networking whatever" websites as I can.


Ben

Skywing a écrit :

Hmm... doesn't that kind of defeat the point of using Twitter instead of your 
own infrastructure to begin with, aside from adding another (Posterous) single 
point of failure for all your communication mechanisms?

Perhaps it is not so important for snow days vs. outage situations, but it 
seems to me like it would be simpler and more reliable to go directly to the 
source and not use Posterous.

(Besides, I suspect the chances are reasonable that between mail/www/Twitter, 
you're going to have a low set of users in the other social networking sites 
crowd who don't have any overlap to begin with.  Diminishing returns?)

- S

-Original Message-
From: JC Dill 
Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2009 08:18
Cc: na...@merit.edu 
Subject: Re: Using twitter as an outage notification


Roland Perry wrote:
  

There's the temptation by some of companies to leverage the latest
technology to appear "cool" and "in tune" with customers, but by far and
large, when something goes down customers either do no nothing, wait, or
call in.  I think the best use of everyone's time is to make sure
their call
center/support desk has the capability to post an announcement to
those that
call in.
  

It's a High School. They don't have a "support desk" (or more than
handful of phone lines [1]). Even the local radio station can't cope
with one call per school asking them to broadcast the news that they
have closed due to bad weather.



And then make sure something gets posted to the website.
  

Unfortunately, the number of students polling the website for news
means it can't cope with the traffic.


Really?  Um, wow.  How big is this school?  Is the webserver on an ISDN
line?
  

I don't believe they can justify paying more for better web hosting,
just to manage this once-a-year half hour event.


This is a case where it makes *perfect* sense to offload emergency
notifications to another, larger system such as twitter, *as well as*
post to the school website (ideally via a blog, so you can use posterus
to do both actions in one email).  There's no fee, the cost to "set
up"[1] is your time to securely configure a posterus account and a list
to send to posterus (see below) and then to send an announcement post to
posterus (and thus post on the school blog and on twitter) and to send
an email to all students and parents notifying them so they can follow
the school's announcement feed on twitter.

jc

[1] To setup: create an announcement mailing list with a name like
post7204...@school.edu - the name is kept private.  The mailing list
will send to posterus (and yourself - do NOT use this list to send to
regular users - if you want to do that make a different list, a public
list).  This prevents students from sending out snow day emails by
forging the school's secretary's email address and sending to posterus
themselves - they would need to guess the name of the mailing list and
send "from" that name to posterus to forge a snow day email.

For even more security, set the list to no approved posters.  The people
who are authorized to send out the announcement will be authorized to
*approve* posts from non-members (who are everyone).  Anyone on the
school staff can post (but still, keep the address private, only
distribute it to those who need to know!).  The posts are held for
moderation and are sent to the people who can approve, and they have to
click on the approval link and approve the post before it gets
distributed.  Test this system with the people who will use it, so that
they understand what happens if they are the first one to click on the
approval link, and what happens if someone else is first (no messages
left to approve).  Also, make sure they can remember the password for
moderating the private email list - the whole thing grinds to a halt if
none of them can remember their password at 4 am when they try to send a
snowday announcement and it remains stuck in the distribution list and
never gets out and posted.  The usual system people use to remember an
infrequently used password (of having a password on a note by the
computer in the office) doesn't work at 4 am when everyone is at home.

jc


  

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Roland Perry]

In article <4a50c401.9070...@gmail.com>, JC Dill 
 writes


Unfortunately, the number of students polling the website for news 
means it can't cope with the traffic.


Really?  Um, wow.  How big is this school?  Is the webserver on an ISDN 
line?


It appears to be at a co-location centre in a distant city. I expect 
it's provided as part of a package by one of the $5 domain hosting 
companies. The bandwidth limiting is more likely a quota than a lack of 
connectivity.


I don't believe they can justify paying more for better web hosting, 
just to manage this once-a-year half hour event.


This is a case where it makes *perfect* sense to offload emergency 
notifications to another, larger system such as twitter,


That's my current view, too.


you can use posterus


It's going to be hard enough getting them to be comfortable with 
Twitter.

--
Roland Perry

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

[Neil]

On Sun, Jul 5, 2009 at 7:15 AM, Roland Perry  wrote:

> In article <4a50acb7.6070...@airwire.ie>, Martin List-Petersen <
> mar...@airwire.ie> writes
>
>> Calling it a lame web 2.0 is pretty much off, when it's actually used
>> for something sensible.
>>
>
> I seem to be trying to find the middle ground between members of the public
> who think "The Internet isn't appropriate because they didn't teach it to me
> in college 20 years ago" and those who say "Web 2.0 isn't appropriate
> because they didn't teach it to me in college 5 years ago".
>
> Shouldn't we at least be giving it the benefit of the doubt?


Well, I'm no social media expert, and I don't spend a whole lot of time on
any of the social networking sites (I particularly dislike Facebook,
actually). (And yet, I'm probably about as qualified for the SME title as
90% of those who claim to be...)

However, I was a student fairly recently, and so maybe my perspective will
hold some value.

I really like the Posterous+Twitter+Facebook+etc. combo. To manage the Fb
side, you could probably tap a trusted student to make the School an Fb
page. A lot of the students will check there. Parents will probably check
the Posterous or Twitter pages. Some of the more tech-savvy students and
parents will sign up for Twitter and get SMS notifications.

And then, additionally, there are plenty of ways to grab that data and copy
it onto the school website as well (at least until it crumbles under the
load), and you could broadcast it over a mailing list to people's email
address.

The idea, I think, is to deliver your message to as much of your audience as
you can. By delivering your message over multiple mediums, you're making it
easy for your audience to hear the message, since they can do it in the way
that's most comfortable to them. And the redundancy doesn't hurt.

Soooo... (Was Re: Using twitter as an outage notification)

[jamie rishaw]

How do I configure my router for that?


Router(config)# no ML jibber-jabber
  ^
% Invalid input detected at 'twitter' marker.


-j
-- 
Jamie Rishaw // .com.a...@j <- reverse it. ish.
[Impressive C-level Title Here], arpa / arpa labs

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification (was: Fire, Power loss at Fisher Plaza in Seattle)

[Brandon Butterworth]

> Paying a lot more to host the website with higher "burst" capacity 
> during an emergency, isn't an option.
> 
> The only other idea I've had is to sign all the customers up to receive 
> an SMS via some sort of broadcast service (the news will fit easily in 
> one SMS).

If the event is suitably calamitous we will do that for you -

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/5194672.stm


brandon

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification (was: Fire, Power loss at Fisher Plaza in Seattle)

[Roland Perry]

In article <200907041222.naa23...@sunf10.rd.bbc.co.uk>, Brandon 
Butterworth  writes

Paying a lot more to host the website with higher "burst" capacity
during an emergency, isn't an option.

The only other idea I've had is to sign all the customers up to receive
an SMS via some sort of broadcast service (the news will fit easily in
one SMS).


If the event is suitably calamitous we will do that for you -

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/5194672.stm


The "event" (typically closing a High School because of snow, but we 
have swine flu these days too) is currently reported mainly by local 
radio stations. However it doesn't scale - there are perhaps two hundred 
of them trying to phone in to one radio station during the same 15 
minutes after they made the decision, half an hour before the school is 
supposed to open for the day.


Another problem with a literally "broadcast" system is that it takes 
them too long to read out the names of the schools which are closed, 
even if trying to cover just one county.


Nor does it matter to anyone except a particular closed group of perhaps 
1000 households whether any one school is closed - so telling everyone 
is a bit of a waste.


So it seemed to me that a Tweet from the school would be an ideal 
solution.


But a system like yours, if it could be divided up into a few tens of 
thousands of SIGs (one for each school), is the kind of "more 
traditional" solution I was thinking about.

--
Roland Perry

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification (was: Fire, Power loss at Fisher Plaza in Seattle)

[Marshall Eubanks]

On Jul 4, 2009, at 6:17 AM, Roland Perry wrote:

In article <786ba8c0-b534-40ff-9126-1e33bd11c...@americafree.tv>,  
Marshall Eubanks  writes

That's a great idea, use some lame Web 2.0 trend to communicate with
actual real life customers. 


I would assume they figured it was better than just remaining silent.


I'm about to recommend to an organisation that it [a twitter  
account] is better than posting news of an outage on their low- 
volume website, which will get swamped when too many people poll it  
for news.




What if the outage takes out their website too ?

I don't think that their website was up, and I would guess that they  
didn't have email either. That

is a bad situation to be in.

Note, BTW, that twitter itself is subject to frequent planned and  
unplanned outages.


Marshall


What does the team think?

Paying a lot more to host the website with higher "burst" capacity  
during an emergency, isn't an option.


The only other idea I've had is to sign all the customers up to  
receive an SMS via some sort of broadcast service (the news will fit  
easily in one SMS).

--
Roland Perry




Regards
Marshall Eubanks
CEO / AmericaFree.TV

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification (was: Fire, Power loss at Fisher Plaza in Seattle)

[Roland Perry]

In article , 
Marshall Eubanks  writes



That's a great idea, use some lame Web 2.0 trend to communicate with
actual real life customers. 


I would assume they figured it was better than just remaining silent.


I'm about to recommend to an organisation that it [a twitter account] 
is better than posting news of an outage on their low- volume website, 
which will get swamped when too many people poll it for news.


What if the outage takes out their website too ?


The website is hosted elsewhere, however the entire message can be 
delivered in one Tweet, so there's no need to confirm by looking at a 
website.


I don't think that their website was up, and I would guess that they 
didn't have email either. That is a bad situation to be in.


They don't plan to respond to email in real time.

Note, BTW, that twitter itself is subject to frequent planned and 
unplanned outages.


The question being, how often will they co-incide with the events I'm 
trying to track?


fwiw, I've been using twitter for about three months now, and have never 
encountered either kind of outage.


--
Roland Perry

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification (was: Fire, Power loss at Fisher Plaza in Seattle)

[Jeffrey Lyon]

Personally, I find it difficult to take Twitter seriously. It seems
like more of a kids toy than a business tool. Something like a
blogspot account would make a lot more sense.

Jeff



On 7/4/09, Marshall Eubanks  wrote:
>
>  On Jul 4, 2009, at 6:17 AM, Roland Perry wrote:
>
>
> > In article
> <786ba8c0-b534-40ff-9126-1e33bd11c...@americafree.tv>,
> Marshall Eubanks  writes
> >
> > >
> > > > That's a great idea, use some lame Web 2.0 trend to communicate with
> > > > actual real life customers. 
> > > >
> > > >
> > > I would assume they figured it was better than just remaining silent.
> > >
> >
> > I'm about to recommend to an organisation that it [a twitter account] is
> better than posting news of an outage on their low-volume website, which
> will get swamped when too many people poll it for news.
> >
> >
>
>  What if the outage takes out their website too ?
>
>  I don't think that their website was up, and I would guess that they didn't
> have email either. That
>  is a bad situation to be in.
>
>  Note, BTW, that twitter itself is subject to frequent planned and unplanned
> outages.
>
>  Marshall
>
>
> > What does the team think?
> >
> > Paying a lot more to host the website with higher "burst" capacity during
> an emergency, isn't an option.
> >
> > The only other idea I've had is to sign all the customers up to receive an
> SMS via some sort of broadcast service (the news will fit easily in one
> SMS).
> > --
> > Roland Perry
> >
> >
> >
>
>  Regards
>  Marshall Eubanks
>  CEO / AmericaFree.TV
>
>
>
>
>


-- 
Jeffrey Lyon, Leadership Team
jeffrey.l...@blacklotus.net | http://www.blacklotus.net
Black Lotus Communications of The IRC Company, Inc.

Look for us at HostingCon 2009 in Washington, DC on August 10th - 12th
at Booth #401.

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification (was: Fire, Power loss at Fisher Plaza in Seattle)

[Michael Hallgren]

Le samedi 04 juillet 2009 à 10:47 -0400, Jeffrey Lyon a écrit :
> Personally, I find it difficult to take Twitter seriously. It seems
> like more of a kids toy than a business tool. Something like a
> blogspot account would make a lot more sense.

Yes.

What about (continue to) use old email (inc lists), coupled with 
some roughly out-of-band like cell/pots/sms service? And in parallel 
old irc, et al. 

Any severe problem with, asking us to move over to "portal 
services"?

mh
> 
> Jeff
> 
> 
> 
> On 7/4/09, Marshall Eubanks  wrote:
> >
> >  On Jul 4, 2009, at 6:17 AM, Roland Perry wrote:
> >
> >
> > > In article
> > <786ba8c0-b534-40ff-9126-1e33bd11c...@americafree.tv>,
> > Marshall Eubanks  writes
> > >
> > > >
> > > > > That's a great idea, use some lame Web 2.0 trend to communicate with
> > > > > actual real life customers. 
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > I would assume they figured it was better than just remaining silent.
> > > >
> > >
> > > I'm about to recommend to an organisation that it [a twitter account] is
> > better than posting news of an outage on their low-volume website, which
> > will get swamped when too many people poll it for news.
> > >
> > >
> >
> >  What if the outage takes out their website too ?
> >
> >  I don't think that their website was up, and I would guess that they didn't
> > have email either. That
> >  is a bad situation to be in.
> >
> >  Note, BTW, that twitter itself is subject to frequent planned and unplanned
> > outages.
> >
> >  Marshall
> >
> >
> > > What does the team think?
> > >
> > > Paying a lot more to host the website with higher "burst" capacity during
> > an emergency, isn't an option.
> > >
> > > The only other idea I've had is to sign all the customers up to receive an
> > SMS via some sort of broadcast service (the news will fit easily in one
> > SMS).
> > > --
> > > Roland Perry
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >  Regards
> >  Marshall Eubanks
> >  CEO / AmericaFree.TV
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> 
> 
-- 
michael hallgren, mh2198-ripe

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification (was: Fire, Power loss at Fisher Plaza in Seattle)

[Roland Perry]

In article 
<16720fe00907040747k67ca1206kb871420deb5e8...@mail.gmail.com>, Jeffrey 
Lyon  writes

Personally, I find it difficult to take Twitter seriously. It seems
like more of a kids toy than a business tool. Something like a
blogspot account would make a lot more sense.


That's the kind of "marketing-led" response I was hoping to hear.

But the UK National Rail system now uses Tweets to tell customers about 
disruptions on the trains, and several major UK government departments 
and news organisations use it for announcements and "Breaking News".


So has it become "respectable" yet?
--
Roland Perry

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification (was: Fire, Power loss at Fisher Plaza in Seattle)

[Michael Hallgren]

Le samedi 04 juillet 2009 à 16:58 +0200, Michael Hallgren a écrit :
> Le samedi 04 juillet 2009 à 10:47 -0400, Jeffrey Lyon a écrit :
> > Personally, I find it difficult to take Twitter seriously. It seems
> > like more of a kids toy than a business tool. Something like a
> > blogspot account would make a lot more sense.
> 
> Yes.
> 
> What about (continue to) use old email (inc lists), coupled with 
> some roughly out-of-band like cell/pots/sms service? And in parallel 
> old irc, et al. 
> 
> Any severe problem with, asking us to move over to "portal 
> services"?

Of course not negative with respect to new innovative means... But if
we didn't have pidgin: msn, yahoo!, gtalk, icq, facebook,... ... 
would be hard to manage... and remember who's message to track via
what channel...

So, the channel I think is much dependent on the audience. The crowd
small enough, most any means will be fine. The crowd more universal,
well-known, stable communication protocols should be a natural
choice. No?

mh


> 
> mh
> > 
> > Jeff
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > On 7/4/09, Marshall Eubanks  wrote:
> > >
> > >  On Jul 4, 2009, at 6:17 AM, Roland Perry wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > > In article
> > > <786ba8c0-b534-40ff-9126-1e33bd11c...@americafree.tv>,
> > > Marshall Eubanks  writes
> > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > > That's a great idea, use some lame Web 2.0 trend to communicate with
> > > > > > actual real life customers. 
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > I would assume they figured it was better than just remaining silent.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > I'm about to recommend to an organisation that it [a twitter account] is
> > > better than posting news of an outage on their low-volume website, which
> > > will get swamped when too many people poll it for news.
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >  What if the outage takes out their website too ?
> > >
> > >  I don't think that their website was up, and I would guess that they 
> > > didn't
> > > have email either. That
> > >  is a bad situation to be in.
> > >
> > >  Note, BTW, that twitter itself is subject to frequent planned and 
> > > unplanned
> > > outages.
> > >
> > >  Marshall
> > >
> > >
> > > > What does the team think?
> > > >
> > > > Paying a lot more to host the website with higher "burst" capacity 
> > > > during
> > > an emergency, isn't an option.
> > > >
> > > > The only other idea I've had is to sign all the customers up to receive 
> > > > an
> > > SMS via some sort of broadcast service (the news will fit easily in one
> > > SMS).
> > > > --
> > > > Roland Perry
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >  Regards
> > >  Marshall Eubanks
> > >  CEO / AmericaFree.TV
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > 
> > 
-- 
michael hallgren, mh2198-ripe

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification (was: Fire, Power loss at Fisher Plaza in Seattle)

[Michael Holstein]

However it doesn't scale


Anyone who's seen the "fail whale" might argue the same about Twitter.


Cheers,

Michael Holstein
Cleveland State University

Re: Re: Using twitter as an outage notification (was : Fire, Power loss at Fisher Plaza in Seattle)

[Brandon Galbraith]

On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 3:24 PM, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Jul 2009, Marshall Eubanks wrote:
>
>> In a real crisis, redundancy rules.
>
> ... and simplicity.
>
> It's always "fun" when those outages pages rely on sql backends etc, so
> they're capable of tens or hundreds of users, so they look fine normally.
> When an outage happens and people really need the information and want it,
> things stop working.
>
> I've been advocating a distributed system with static HTML pages being
> generated and pushed out when things change. Huge load capability, you can
> put it anycasted at multiple IXes so it's geographically and ISP
resiliant,
> larger ISPs can even request to get their own mirror. Keeping it simple.
>
> No takers yet though, people seem to have too much confidence in
> complicated, centralized, nice looking solutions.
>
> --
> Mikael Abrahamssonemail: swm...@swm.pp.se
>
>

http://www.coralcdn.org/

-- 
Brandon Galbraith
Mobile: 630.400.6992

Re: Re: Using twitter as an outage notification (was : Fire, Power loss at Fisher Plaza in Seattle)

[Mikael Abrahamsson]

On Tue, 7 Jul 2009, Brandon Galbraith wrote:


http://www.coralcdn.org/


Nice, looks very much like the thing I was advocating. Hard part is 
getting authorities et al interested in such an "ad hoc" solution. 
Preferrably they could do both and then we can see which one works best in 
an emergency :P


--
Mikael Abrahamssonemail: swm...@swm.pp.se

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification (was =?UTF-8?Q?:=20Fire, =20Power=20loss=20at=20Fisher=20Plaza=20in=20Seattle)?=

[nevin]

On Monday, July 6, 2009 10:00am, "Michael Holstein" 
 said:
> 
>> However it doesn't scale
> 
> Anyone who's seen the "fail whale" might argue the same about Twitter.
>  
> Cheers,
> 
> Michael Holstein
> Cleveland State University
 
With a past week of highly visible outages in the data center/provider 
industry, take a look at the section: "Crisis Communications Moves Fast" in 
this story, for another view of using communications channels like Twitter.  
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/07/06/the-day-after-a-brutal-week-for-uptime/

-- Nevin Lyne
-- CTO
-- EngineHosting.com

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification (was =?UTF-8?Q?:=20Fire, =20Power=20loss =20at=20Fisher=20Plaza=20in=20Seattle) ?=

[Marshall Eubanks]

On Jul 6, 2009, at 11:08 AM, ne...@enginehosting.com wrote:

On Monday, July 6, 2009 10:00am, "Michael Holstein" > said:



However it doesn't scale


Anyone who's seen the "fail whale" might argue the same about  
Twitter.


Cheers,

Michael Holstein
Cleveland State University


With a past week of highly visible outages in the data center/ 
provider industry, take a look at the section: "Crisis  
Communications Moves Fast" in this story, for another view of using  
communications channels like Twitter.  http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/07/06/the-day-after-a-brutal-week-for-uptime/


-- Nevin Lyne
-- CTO
-- EngineHosting.com




Just to add something to this, twitter has been slow all afternoon and  
now I am getting the "fail whale"


Twitter is over capacity.
Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again

I presume that this has something to do with the Michael Jackson  
Memorial Service now underway.


I just thought I would point out in real time the obvious danger of  
using a backup service that itself could fail under load,
especially if your outage and the load could be correlated, say in a  
disaster or public emergency situation.


Regards
Marshall







Regards
Marshall Eubanks
CEO / AmericaFree.TV

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification (was =?UTF-8?Q?:=20Fire, =20Power=20loss =20at=20Fisher=20Plaza=20in=20Seattle) ?=

[Marc Manthey]

However it doesn't scale


Anyone who's seen the "fail whale" might argue the same about  
Twitter.


Just to add something to this, twitter has been slow all afternoon  
and now I am getting the "fail whale"



I just thought I would point out in real time the obvious danger of  
using a backup service that itself could fail under load,
especially if your outage and the load could be correlated, say in a  
disaster or public emergency situation.


yep, got that too several time, but everytime i "reload" the page it  
works , there were plenty of outages before twitter
got the 35 million cash injection , but your absolutly right , its  
centralisted , so there will be serverfarms over serverfarms to get over
these "event" peaks. Would a decentralised system like  http://laconi.ca/ 
  not a better choice ?


just my 50 cents

http://identi.ca/macbroadcast/
--  
Les enfants teribbles - research / deployment

Marc Manthey
Vogelsangerstrasse 97
D - 50823 Köln - Germany
Vogelsangerstrasse 97
Geo: 50.945554, 6.920293
PGP/GnuPG: 0x1ac02f3296b12b4d
Tel.:0049-221-29891489
Mobil:0049-1577-3329231
web : http://www.let.de

Opinions expressed may not even be mine by the time you read them, and  
certainly don't reflect those of any other entity (legal or otherwise).


Please note that according to the German law on data retention,  
information on every electronic information exchange with me is  
retained for a period of six months.

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification (was =?UTF-8?Q?:=20Fire, =20Power=20loss =20at=20Fisher=20Plaza=20in=20Seattle) ?=

[Marshall Eubanks]

On Jul 7, 2009, at 4:03 PM, Marc Manthey wrote:




However it doesn't scale


Anyone who's seen the "fail whale" might argue the same about  
Twitter.


Just to add something to this, twitter has been slow all afternoon  
and now I am getting the "fail whale"



I just thought I would point out in real time the obvious danger of  
using a backup service that itself could fail under load,
especially if your outage and the load could be correlated, say in  
a disaster or public emergency situation.


yep, got that too several time, but everytime i "reload" the page it  
works , there were plenty of outages before twitter
got the 35 million cash injection , but your absolutly right , its  
centralisted , so there will be serverfarms over serverfarms to get  
over
these "event" peaks. Would a decentralised system like  http://laconi.ca/ 
  not a better choice ?




In a real crisis, redundancy rules.

Regards
Marshall


just my 50 cents

http://identi.ca/macbroadcast/
-- Les enfants teribbles - research / deployment
Marc Manthey
Vogelsangerstrasse 97
D - 50823 Köln - Germany
Vogelsangerstrasse 97
Geo: 50.945554, 6.920293
PGP/GnuPG: 0x1ac02f3296b12b4d
Tel.:0049-221-29891489
Mobil:0049-1577-3329231
web : http://www.let.de

Opinions expressed may not even be mine by the time you read them,  
and certainly don't reflect those of any other entity (legal or  
otherwise).


Please note that according to the German law on data retention,  
information on every electronic information exchange with me is  
retained for a period of six months.






Regards
Marshall Eubanks
CEO / AmericaFree.TV

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification (was =?UTF-8?Q?:=20Fire, =20Power=20loss=20at=20Fisher=20Plaza=20in=20Seattle)?=

[Mikael Abrahamsson]

On Tue, 7 Jul 2009, Marshall Eubanks wrote:


In a real crisis, redundancy rules.


... and simplicity.

It's always "fun" when those outages pages rely on sql backends etc, so 
they're capable of tens or hundreds of users, so they look fine normally. 
When an outage happens and people really need the information and want it, 
things stop working.


I've been advocating a distributed system with static HTML pages being 
generated and pushed out when things change. Huge load capability, you can 
put it anycasted at multiple IXes so it's geographically and ISP 
resiliant, larger ISPs can even request to get their own mirror. Keeping 
it simple.


No takers yet though, people seem to have too much confidence in 
complicated, centralized, nice looking solutions.


--
Mikael Abrahamssonemail: swm...@swm.pp.se

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification (was =?UTF-8?Q?:=20Fire, =20Power=20loss =20at=20Fisher=20Plaza=20in=20Seattle) ?=

[Marshall Eubanks]

On Jul 7, 2009, at 4:24 PM, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:


On Tue, 7 Jul 2009, Marshall Eubanks wrote:


In a real crisis, redundancy rules.


... and simplicity.

It's always "fun" when those outages pages rely on sql backends etc,  
so they're capable of tens or hundreds of users, so they look fine  
normally. When an outage happens and people really need the  
information and want it, things stop working.


I've been advocating a distributed system with static HTML pages  
being generated and pushed out when things change. Huge load  
capability, you can put it anycasted at multiple IXes so it's  
geographically and ISP resiliant, larger ISPs can even request to  
get their own mirror. Keeping it simple.




This would seem to be ideal for P2P, which is decentralized and has  
proven quite resilient under attack.


No takers yet though, people seem to have too much confidence in  
complicated, centralized, nice looking solutions.




Have you talked to the guys at BitTorrent ? I could make introductions  
during the Stockholm IETF if you need them.



--
Mikael Abrahamssonemail: swm...@swm.pp.se




Regards
Marshall Eubanks
AmericaFree.TV