Twitter is as unstable as it is irresistible. It’s shaky two year history (give it a few weeks to bring home its second anniversary) has been marked by plenty of highs, but just as quickly, infuriating lows.
This time, though...this time it’s going to be different. It’s going to greet its users Monday morning, and as Apple’s global fan club descends on Moscone West in San Francisco, physically and/or virtually, Twitter’s going to take its users through it all. From the grand-opening to the Steve Jobs sermon to the wink-wink-you-know- what’s-coming launch party, Twitter’s got it covered. Probably. Maybe. No guarantees. They’re expecting a ten-fold increase over their normal daily traffic count, so wager as you please.
"We've moved much of the load off our database by utilizing more memcache, employing more read-slave servers, and by fixing some bugs for improved efficiency. This work is in intended to help handle the load and keep Twitter up and running while Steve Jobs talks about all the new products and services Apple has planned. Of course these improvements will continue to serve Twitter beyond the WWDC as well."
Otherwise, communication breakdown, folks. Which won’t please anyone. Enter, Plan B:
"In the event that our estimates and preparations fail, we have designed a way to keep Twitter updates moving quickly through the system to their respective recipients. We have isolated and created on/off switches for many Twitter features. Should it become necessary to shed incoming load quickly, we can turn off features such as stats, pagination, and several others to preserve the reliability and timeliness of your Twitter timeline."