Twitter "Twitpocalypse" Snags Mac, iPhone Apps

awarrenfells notes coverage in Macworld of what is being called "the Twitpocalypse" — Twitter applications breaking as the number of tweets exceeds 32 bits. "The first apparent victim of the Twitpocalypse was The Iconfactory's Twitterrific for iPhone, which stopped working immediately following the event. ... Atebits Software's Tweetie has also been affected by the Twitpocalypse. The program continues to function for browsing and posting tweets, but searches no longer work in the Mac version and results appear one at a time in the iPhone version."

Well.

[dov_0]

Which twit didn't see that one coming? Surely it should have shown up in testing?

Re:Well.

[Darkness404]

In later testing, it should be dected, but to overflow 32 bits thats over 2 billion messages. For being founded as a not-so-major project, I don't think they would think that in 3 years that it would reach that much.

Re:Is it just me...

[paazin]

Is it just me or does Twitter seem to be the most unreliable of all social networking sites? I mean, between these outages and the "fail whale" that appears every day or so, can't they get some decent servers? I mean, even Facebook which has way more people consuming way more bandwidth doesn't go down near this often.

Probably because they realize as soon as this fad passes, pretty much the only value they'll have are those upgraded servers.

Re:Well.

[maxume]

You might start thinking about it around 1 billion though. Maybe even at 500 million (especially if you are in some sort of obscene growth phase...).

Re:And...

[eldavojohn]

... nothing of value was lost.

Actually what was lost was any hope left I had for humanity. More than 2,147,483,647 'tweets' have been 'tweeted.' God, I feel stupid just saying that. But what is that? Like half the population of earth?! And then they go so far as to call lack of mobile Twitter applications apocalyptic? Humanity has officially jumped the shark, people. Some other animal should have been given a shot at ruining the world.

I mean at least I can derive cheap entertainment from cell phone texts [textsfromlastnight.com] but Twitter transcripts have little to no value in my eyes. If anyone needs me, I'll be in the backyard building a rocket ship to seek out another planet free of Twitter. Hopefully it'll just have more minor problems like being covered in methane or a flesh eating silicon based virus ...

Re:Overflowing 32 bits

[johnlcallaway]

Have faith .. if you ignore the orphan tweets [slate.com], the remaining messages were only created by 37 people who aren't smart enough to realize that their friends don't really give a crap about what they are doing, or are willing to wait to hear about the important stuff when they get together to do stuff instead of sitting with deer eyes in front of the iPhone waiting for the next tweet to show up.

Twitpocalypse?

[Reed Solomon]

Man am I glad I never got on this bandwagon.

Re:Twitter uses 64bits, 3rd party apps do not

[ZyBex]

Most occasional programmers don't think about these issues or even, god forbids, check the API's documentation. They just happily use "long a,b,c;" all over the source code. I even bet that version 0.1 of some of those apps used "int a,b,c;" ...

Re:Let's see

[MichaelSmith]

What do we get out of this [slashdot.org]? Is it any different?

Can you see the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't see the point". That's a lazy response. Millions of people are sending billions of tweets, surely not every single one of them is completely a fool, deserving to be humbled by your genius' stated lack of understanding?

Whatever the reason, you seem to think it's important to tell everyone how much you don't understand, and really it just looks silly.

Maybe you say "I tried it for a while and I didn't get it". OK, you tried to understand, and couldn't, so you gave up. It's not any more impressive than just outright telling us you don't understand.

Understanding why people do things, even if you disagree, is a good thing. Understanding lets you work with people. Understanding gives you insight towards changing their mind. You should strive for understanding, rather than wallow in telling people how much you don't understand. "I don't see the point" is a step on the road towards anti-intellectualism.

Why is twitter hate so cool around /.

[loteck]

You guys have been calling twitter a fad for at least two years [slashdot.org], meanwhile families, businesses, celebrities and politicians have been flocking to it in droves and using it extremely successfully. For example, Dell.

Also, I see a lot of "what does Twitter really do??" posts. Either these posters are simply being obtuse or /. IQ's have plummeted recently.

Re:Why is twitter hate so cool around /.

[Anonymous Coward]

It comes from the fact that Twitter's gotten a shitload of media hype far beyond what it deserves, to where something is important not because of its substance but because it's on Twitter. It's like when TV shows would heavily advertise their website, and their website had fuck-all for content.

There are a couple of big differences between websites of old and Twitter, though: The web offers a flexible format for content delivery and websites have eventually started to make use of this flexibility, whereas Twitter is inherently extremely limited. Also, websites are not all reliant on a single private company that has absolutely nothing resembling a viable business model -- whereas Twitter mostly certainly is.

Re:And...

[MrMista_B]

You feel stupid saying 'tweet', but you're posting on a site called 'Slashdot'.

Re:Why is twitter hate so cool around /.

[tsa]

Some fads last long. See Second life, or SUVs. Both useless but it took a long time for most people to realize that.

why use a signed integer for that?

[MrBallistic]

if you know you're getting a positive number back, why not just use uint?

Re:Well.

[0100010001010011]

I want to know who setup twits as signed. Are there going to be negative twits? Twits by your evil twin?

THINK about what your code does and choose the appropriate data type.

Re:Let's see

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you don't have any friends?

Seriously: you value your RSS news feeds - but can't understand the value of updates from people that you actually know?

It's just a matter of priorities.

Re:Let's see

[Anonymous Coward]

Here I go:

1. My research computer cluster at work twitters to tell me simulations are done.

2. The journal of the American Chemical Society twitters updates on interesting papers and news

3. My friends twitter at research conferences to tell me about a good seminar (so I can read about the research)

4. I twitter status updates about when I'll be at work, late for a meeting, running simulations for a few hours, just finished edits on a paper, or when the firewall is screwing around with me.

I'm a graduate student, if you couldn't guess. Although many of these things could be done with RSS and e-mail, it's just nice to have everything in one spot and quickly digestible. Hopefully this should clear any confusion for the "get off my lawn" slashdot.

Re:Let's see

[FireFury03]

Seriously: you value your RSS news feeds - but can't understand the value of updates from people that you actually know?

Oddly enough, I have personal conversations (in real life, or online) with my friends rather than just reading "status updates" broadcast as summaries to the masses. Generally I couldn't care less about the status of people who aren't my friends, let alone people I don't even know (there seems to be a trend for people to follow celebrities on twitter that I just don't get...).