Twitter is Sorting Out it’s Scalability Issues

Nice to hear that Twitter is addressing their stability problems. My sense is they maybe didn’t expect to get so popular quite so fast. Still no word on their business model but it’s admirable that they’ve so far resisted the Google AdSense cancer…

Our direction going forward is to replace our existing system, component-by-component, with parts that are designed from the ground up to meet the requirements that have emerged as Twitter has grown. First and foremost amongst those requirements is stability. We’re planning for a gradual transition; our existing system will be maintained while new parts are built, and old parts swapped out for new as they’re completed. The alternative – scrapping everything for “the big rewrite” – is untenable, particularly given our small (but growing!) engineering and operations team.