Twitter on Rails. Yes Please.
I finally got a Twitter account and I must say it is a pretty nice idea and nicely implemented. I didn’t think it made much sense at first, but the short snippet of messages work out much better than an entire blog post.
So who else is on Twitter? Add me: http://www.twitter.com/Marston
You can add me on Virb too 
http://virb.com/marston
I think twitter also did a great job at capturing the whole “social” thing at its core, much better than MySpace or even Digg I think for that matter. Since its much more simplistic, focuses directly on the individual and dispenses its value/info in bit-sized chunks that are easily digestible
4000req/s via Rails and TextDrive?
Its an interesting discussion by itself regarding the technical aspects of twitter. From what I understand its built off Ruby on Rails and the guys over at TextDrive are hosting it on their Accelerator (load-balanced, Solaris VPS’) and serving storage by their Sun x4600 thumpers. Though I’m not sure if this number is specific to Twitter itself (very well could be), they’ve tweaked their setup to serve Rails apps at 4000req/s!
But the interesting part is these specs and stats came out weeks ago and within that time Twitter has grown even bigger. I think it’s going to be fun to see the traffic spikes that have resulted by people using it during SXSW, as a matter of fact you can see it now. I’m not 100% positive if Twitter is actually were doing 4000req/s a few weeks ago but it could be likely that can be true now, seeing how low the site has been the last few days.
Twitter in Europe
The state of Twitter in Europe might be funny as well. By and large the service I think will be adopted well, though the interface to the app via SMS/Text Messaging might not see as much use. Coming from the states myself, I have to say the phone plans here are PITIFUL 
. Yes, you only pay for the calls you make and not incoming (Though U.S. Plans double their minutes), but besides that everything else is of minuscule comparison.
Most plans don’t come with SMS and you much get a separate plan which usually don’t give you more than a few hundred. For example, I pay 3Euro a month extra for 30 SMS/Texts a month, yes, 30. I find that is the general state of text messaging at least in Holland between the various major carriers. Though the more expensive data-plans might have more minutes (few are unlimited in Holland), it probably won’t be enough for the avid phone Twitter.
Coming from Cingular in the states before I moved here, I had unlimited texting for $10/month. They took that away, but hear they recently added unlimited texting again for $5/month! Though Europe has better phone selection, I have to say the U.S. caught up and passed them quick in many areas.
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Posted on March 13, 2007
Filed Under Analytics, Art & Design, Business, CSS/XHTML, Daily Thoughts, Design, General, Hardware, Hosting, Marketing, Mobile Tech, Productivity, Quotes, Ranting, Ruby on Rails, SEO, Startup, Tech, Web
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I'm Marston and here you'll find my rantings, rhetoric and other useful info. I dig tech, photography, quantum physics and organic food. I'm the founder of SugarStats.com and thats my days developing.
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