Help

[Jesse Stay]

Hey Alex, if there's anything we can do to make your life easier, let us know.  I think we're all frustrated, and we all know Twitter can't just shut off the API entirely, but I'm sure there must be ways we as developers can collaboratively work together to help Twitter through this period until they can get their new architecture in place.

I used to work at a Fortune 40 company that had just acquired a new startup, and I inherited the new startup's code.  That new startup had written their software based on a Prototype, and it was no where near ready to handle the load of the Fortune 40's traffic.  Because of that, we were stuck trying to rewrite many components of the code.  I'm not sure if anyone here has been in similar situations (I know I had several coworkers that this was not new to them either), but when your traffic grows extremely fast, and especially in ways that are unexpected, there's only so much that can be done, and you're stuck rushing to rewrite the code the right way while fielding off management, the public, Scoble, Arrington, and others until it gets done right.  I've been there and I feel for you.

I'm sure many developers on this list have been there too, and would be willing to work with you to help you get things back in order if you can guide us in the right direction.  I think you've given some of that advice already, but please let us know if there's more we can do.

--Jesse

[Kee Hinckley]

On May 31, 2008, at 12:52 AM, Jesse Stay wrote:
> Hey Alex, if there's anything we can do to make your life easier,
> let us know. I

Seconded.

I've been very impressed by how Alex has continued to be responsive to
this list while he is clearly juggling lots of other stuff. You're
doing a great job, and we appreciate that. Thanks.

[Alex Payne]

The main thing I'd ask of you all is to keep being patient. I
understand how frustrating it is to deal with our rapidly evolving
APIs, sudden decreases in rate limits, the
temporary-but-seemingly-ongoing XMPP outage, etc. I sincerely
appreciate you all not only putting up with all this, but continuing
to make suggestions, find bugs, and build amazing applications.

It may take some time, but we'll get to a point when this kind of
instability is a thing of the past. We've got some exciting
developer-facing changes in the pipeline as well. We know that even
amongst providers of free APIs that you have many choices for your
projects, and I'm trying to advocate on your collective behalf to keep
Twitter as competitive and developer-friendly as possible.

Thanks!

--
Alex Payne
http://twitter.com/al3x

[Jesse Stay]

Thanks Alex - just keep communicating with us and we'll do what we can to help.

--Jesse