Thursday, August 06, 2009

Today's Twitter Outage - and You

Never fails.

Yesterday I posted on "Why Aren't You on Twitter?" and today the site goes down for two hours (and counting) - Twitter's largest outage in six months.

But I don't think it was the crush of Canadian Entrepreneur readers that took Twitter.com down today.

CBC.ca just reported that no one knows the reason for the outage, but I can tell you.
(Update: Twitter now blames a denial of service attack. But I have my own theory.)
When you Google Twitter today, the second result is Paula Abdul's Twitter page. Since the whole world is either outraged or overjoyed at her departure from American Idol, the temptation to hear the celebrity's side of the story must have been overwhelming. Literally.

There's a business lesson in this. People love to be empowered. If some issue concerns them, they want both sides of the story. Twitter and other interactive Web 2.0 tools adress this need - and fuel the demand for more.

How can your business help people learn more, feel more empowered, and take greater control of their lives?

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