Think There Might be a Problem? Check Twitter
Twitter is becoming the go to place for information that is current and up to date about happening events. Of course, accuracy isn’t guaranteed, and hysteria can loom large as tweets go wild.
On Feb 24th, around 9:30 am GM, Gmail experienced an outage. US users were still a snooze for the most part, but those in Europe and the UK were displeased to have Gmail down – not just the free version, but that connected with Google Apps as well. Google gears customers could access old messages and write new ones, but couldn’t send until the application came back online.
This isn’t the first outage Google has encountered in recent months, but it is probably the most harrowing – simply because it got Twittered. A lot. Users were being referred to the Google Help Centre by the Google Blog, further indicating the problem was being noticed primarily in countries where working hours were already in session, though the outage was actually world wide.
Twitter is the heartbeat for many – the headlines of their day. The Gmail outage created mass hysteria on Twitter, with a large number of users spread across the globe panicking.
“The world is twiddling thumbs, gmail is down,” one user tweeted. “I should probably get an alternate email address, shouldn’t I,” said another in disgust.
In January, Google had been responsible for panic of a different sort – a glitch in its security program was warning users that websites from all search results were potentially harmful, showing the message “Warning! This site may harm your computer.”
Google is trying hard to get everyone in the ‘cloud’ – but they need to be focused on backup plans to keep the cloud operable. Otherwise the tweets reach fever pitch!
Tags: gmail, Google Docs, Twitter
