It’s a problem that most Web-based companies would love to have: their website servers crumple under the weight of popularity and pent-up demand (as long as denial-of-service attacks are not involved.) It usually means a lot of people have come to rely on your services, or at the very least are checking out what you have to offer.
It has happened most recently to leading e-tailer Amazon and up-and-coming short form messaging service/social network Twitter. Public relations officials at both companies have had to work overtime explaining why users were not able to access the sites. Amazon’s problems hit on June 6th and 9th and were initially chalked up to a hiccup caused by company systems that are “very complex and on rare occasions, despite our best efforts, they may experience problems.” Twitter’s problems happened a couple of weeks ago and included outages and public viewings of supposedly-private “tweets.”
Original software is not able to handle the crush of users so it will be gradually updated.
One company, Amazon, is an Internet pioneer and probably does indeed have a complicated infrastructure; it has experience with this sort of issue gleaned from the ghosts of Christmas past. The other, Twitter, is new on the scene but has gained a lot of media traction via the blogosphere; file their recent problems under growing pains.
The common denominator, and the possible portent of bad tidings for other web companies is the addition of mobile users to the download workload. Twitter targets these users, but Amazon is working to grab a bigger share of it. New touch-friendly cell phones and other devices are arriving on the market. The new faster, cheaper 3G Apple iPhone will introduce on-the-go web browsing, shopping and messaging to a new segment of consumers. A few articles already exist questioning whether networks can handle a mobile world; I wonder if websites themselves are ready for the coming flood.
It’s a problem that most Web-based companies would love to have: their website servers crumple under the weight of popularity and pent-up demand (as long as denial-of-service attacks are not involved.) It usually means a lot of people have come to rely on your services, or at the very least are checking out what you have to offer.
It has happened most recently to leading e-tailer Amazon and up-and-coming short form messaging service/social network Twitter. Public relations officials at both companies have had to work overtime explaining why users were not able to access the sites. Amazon’s problems hit on June 6th and 9th and were initially chalked up to a hiccup caused by company systems that are “very complex and on rare occasions, despite our best efforts, they may experience problems.” Twitter’s problems happened a couple of weeks ago and included outages and public viewings of supposedly-private “tweets.”
Original software is not able to handle the crush of users so it will be gradually updated.
One company, Amazon, is an Internet pioneer and probably does indeed have a complicated infrastructure; it has experience with this sort of issue gleaned from the ghosts of Christmas past. The other, Twitter, is new on the scene but has gained a lot of media traction via the blogosphere; file their recent problems under growing pains.
The common denominator, and the possible portent of bad tidings for other web companies is the addition of mobile users to the download workload. Twitter targets these users, but Amazon is working to grab a bigger share of it. New touch-friendly cell phones and other devices are arriving on the market. The new faster, cheaper 3G Apple iPhone will introduce on-the-go web browsing, shopping and messaging to a new segment of consumers. A few articles already exist questioning whether networks can handle a mobile world; I wonder if websites themselves are ready for the coming flood.
Read [Associated Press via Yahoo!] Read [Beta News]
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