In reports about the recent row over the NHS and the comments made by ex-US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, some news agencies were quick to spot an angle – the fact that Twitter apparently couldn’t handle it.
Reports which spun the Twitter-crippling impact of the campaign included:
The welovetheNHS campaign was launched by Britons keen to counter the allegations, and the sheer number of messages added apparently crashed the Twitter site on Wednesday.
Yahoo! News – Browns Twitter in defence of NHS
…thus the zillions of British Tweets “WE LOVE THE NHS” that, according to BBC Radio, caused Twitter to momentarily crash.
Fodors – “We Love The NHS” Twits crash Twitter
Millions of Britons defended the NHS on Twitter, causing the site to crash at 4pm.
Now, Twitter has indeed been rather ropey recently, but this could be attributed to all manner of causes. Most notably, we had the recent attack from Russian hackers trying to bring down pro-Georgian blogger Cyxymu, an event from which some Twitter API interfaces are still reeling. Nevertheless, many journalists felt it reasonable to conclude that the surge of #welovetheNHS tweets was the cause of Twitter’s latest stumble, and who’s to prove them wrong?
Which brings me to my point – I wonder if we’re seeing the goal of bringing Twitter to its knees fast becoming de rigueur for campaigns and publicity stunts. We know that news of Michael Jackson’s death had such an impact back in June:
“We saw over twice the normal tweets per second the moment the story broke as people shared their grief and memories,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in an e-mail. The tweeting tripped up Twitter briefly, but engineers quickly responded to keep the service running.
Associated Press
And we also know how relatively easy it seems to be, given the regularity of the service’s downtime. Are we therefore entering an era where the success or popularity of a message is not defined by its penetration or conversion rate per se, but rather by its capacity to overload the Twitter servers? A bit like the old days when radio announcers would proudly announce that the phone lines are jammed.
Anyone wanting to achieve such a feat simply needs to conjure up the following perfect storm:
- Create a message which will resound with a good percentage of people across all demographics, or most people in one very large demographic
- Add an urgency to the message – a noble response to something evil or unjust is the best approach
- Assign it a hashtag so the impact it has can be measured
- Prepare a Twibbon to show your support for the cause (thanks to Andy for that one)
- Sit back and watch the chaos
Meanwhile, in preparation for the next Twitter blackout (Twitout?), I suggest you all familiarise yourselves with these Top 5 Survival Tips for a Twitter Crash.
Tags: Twitter
Also for your list, between points 3 and 4, is ‘Prepare a Twibbon to show your support for the cause’.
Ah yes of course. Thanks Andy, have added that one now.