140Char

If you’re wondering what #inaug09 means, it’s the hashtag for people tweeting about the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States.

So aside from keeping an eye on Twitter stability, I’m taking a break.

Strangely it was actually coping well until the moment before I started blogging when an ominous 4 minute lag appeared – if it survives at 4 minutes considering the huge amount of usage it’s experiencing I’ll be mightily impressed!

Just one last thought – the experience of being able to share in the event through Twitter and throughout the web is definitely affecting other UK tweeters, and other people around the world. It seems that the convergence of technology and Obama is connecting people in a new way – perhaps because previous large scale events tended to be around nation-specific sports (e.g. The Superbowl), or large scale tragedies as occurred in Mumbai.

This time it’s a positive event in the messages of everyone I’m witnessing. And that can only be a good thing.

I’m just about to restart my PC to see if the error continues, but at the moment, it appears I’m only seeing Tweets posted 40 minutes ago – and all my updates are being displayed in order at the top…
If it continues after a restart, I’ll grab a screenshot and start trying to get some more details…

Strange Twitter error occurring

Update: 19.52 GMT

I’ve also just noticed that the Twitter warning about the recent phishing attacks which was visible on the main page has now mysteriously vanished for me.

There’s nothing on the official Twitter blog, but it comes strangely soon after the first major Twitter hacking of 33 celebrity accounts, and the first large scale Twitter phishing attack.

Update: 19.56 GMT

Checked the @Twitter account, and there’s a simple sentence on the Twitter Status Blog.

‘We’re experiencing some delays in the amount of time it takes for updates to appear in timelines. Working on this now.’

It was apparently posted an hour ago – I do wonder why messages are split between the official blog and the status blog.