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Using twitter as an outage notification (was: Fire, Power loss at Fisher Plaza in Seattle)

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tomb at byrneit

Jul 4, 2009, 9:01 PM

Post #26 of 60 (1592 views)
Permalink

RE: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Frank Bulk [mailto:frnkblk [at] iname]
>Sent: Saturday, July 04, 2009 4:51 PM
>To: 'JC Dill'
>Cc: nanog [at] merit
>Subject: RE: Using twitter as an outage notification
>
>So does twitter address the mass public,

[TLB:]
The whole point of Twitter is that it works with SMS.

>
>My point in another fork of this thread is that for most people, the
>traditional forms of communication are *it*. I'm not saying that
>twitter
>hasn't been used and found a way to reach the some portion of the
>population
>-- the traditional methods (announcement at top of phone tree & note on
>homepage) should be maintained and as one more additional way to
>communication. I think you mentioned that yourself a few posts ago. =)
>
>Frank
>
[TLB:] I think everyone agrees it's not an "Either/Or".

The argument that Twitter is a good, inexpensive, way to mass
communicate operational issues with those that are able to use it, is
kind of axiomatic.

I'm not, in general, a fan of Twitter. To me, twits are those in my
killfile (yes, I know they call it "tweets"), however, as a way of using
Other People's Money to reduce your OPEX while improving CSI, it seems
like a no-brainer to me.

tvhawaii at shaka

Jul 4, 2009, 9:29 PM

Post #27 of 60 (1589 views)
Permalink

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Frank Bulk"
Sent: Saturday, July 04, 2009 10:59 AM
Subject: RE: Using twitter as an outage notification

> When the local power companies uses twitter, then maybe I'll consider using
> twitter for our customers.
>
> There's the temptation by some of companies to leverage the latest
> technology to appear "cool" and "in tune" with customers, but by far and
> large, when something goes down customers either do no nothing, wait, or
> call in. I think the best use of everyone's time is to make sure their call
> center/support desk has the capability to post an announcement to those that
> call in. And then make sure something gets posted to the website. SMS,
> Facebook, and Twitter fall in line after all that.
>
> Frank

I thought this was interesting:

"Bonnie Smalley has Internet bragging rights: She has been blocked by Twitter for hand-typing too many tweets in an hour.
They thought she was a computer program made to spew spam.
Ms. Smalley, it turns out, is a 100 percent human customer service representative for Comcast. She is one of 10
representatives who reach out to customers through social networks, rather than waiting for them to find Comcast's support
site."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/technology/personaltech/02basics.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

lists at internetpolicyagency

Jul 5, 2009, 3:01 AM

Post #28 of 60 (1576 views)
Permalink

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

In article
<!&!AAAAAAAAAAAuAAAAAAAAAKTyXRN5/+lGvU59a+P7CFMBAN6gY+ZG84BMpVQcAbDh1IQAA
AATbSgAABAAAAAuldg0EWkrSZ9BD0db8+e2AQAAAAA=@iname.com>, Frank Bulk
<frnkblk [at] iname> writes
>When the local power companies uses twitter, then maybe I'll consider using
>twitter for our customers.

That's a poor example as far as the UK's concerned. You can't get
information from the power company for days if you are a domestic
customer.

>There's the temptation by some of companies to leverage the latest
>technology to appear "cool" and "in tune" with customers, but by far and
>large, when something goes down customers either do no nothing, wait, or
>call in. I think the best use of everyone's time is to make sure their call
>center/support desk has the capability to post an announcement to those that
>call in.

It's a High School. They don't have a "support desk" (or more than
handful of phone lines [1]). Even the local radio station can't cope
with one call per school asking them to broadcast the news that they
have closed due to bad weather.

>And then make sure something gets posted to the website.

Unfortunately, the number of students polling the website for news means
it can't cope with the traffic. I don't believe they can justify paying
more for better web hosting, just to manage this once-a-year half hour
event.

--
Roland Perry

lists at internetpolicyagency

Jul 5, 2009, 3:10 AM

Post #29 of 60 (1588 views)
Permalink

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

In article <4A4FC4F3.2010301 [at] rollernet>, Seth Mattinen
<sethm [at] rollernet> writes
>Twitter will attract the "what's cool right now" demographic.

But has it gone from "cool" to "useful" (for this kind of application),
in a way that Facebook and other such sites haven't?

I remember an employer of mine when I was trying to persuade him to
build a modem into a PC so people could exchange what we'd now call
emails, and he said "Roland, come back and ask me again, when I can pay
your wages through that modem thing".

Unfortunately I didn't get the opportunity, as I left there twenty years
ago, and Paypal wasn't invented until about ten years ago.
--
Roland Perry

adrian at creative

Jul 5, 2009, 3:12 AM

Post #30 of 60 (1587 views)
Permalink

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

On Sun, Jul 05, 2009, Roland Perry wrote:

> Unfortunately, the number of students polling the website for news means
> it can't cope with the traffic. I don't believe they can justify paying
> more for better web hosting, just to manage this once-a-year half hour
> event.

Is Twitter making a profit or not?

This discussion about (ab)using a publicly available message system which
isn't currently being charged for would makes me worried^Wamused as hell.

(Not that I can't see possible ways of making money off twitter - especially
if you offer reliable message dissemination services to companies for a fee,
but AFAIK they aren't doing this at the moment.)

Adrian

lists at internetpolicyagency

Jul 5, 2009, 3:23 AM

Post #31 of 60 (1576 views)
Permalink

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

In article <4A4FD58B.2000703 [at] gmail>, JC Dill
<jcdill.lists [at] gmail> writes
>Even easier, you make an email address on your system that is an alias
>to posterous. So they send to "post [at] schoolsystem" which .forwards
>out to posterous, which posts to the school blog, myspace, facebook,
>twitter,

It doesn't have any of those, that's the point really.

Is twitter the one I should get them started with first?

>Show them how a radio station can retweet the info

It's have to be automated as there are hundreds to do over a periods of
a few tens of minutes (the schools don't generally announce they are
closing until they see how many teachers made it to work, and that's not
long before they have to open - students get marked down for being late,
even in bad weather, so can't delay setting out from home; it's an
interesting operational model.)

>and then announce "to get info on school closings, follow us on twitter
>at...."

http://twitter.com/trentfmnews (but it's not exactly high traffic)

>and everyone can send the info TO the radio station and get the info
>FROM the radio station quickly and easily.

The radio station would probably be overwhelmed if they got much more
than one tweet per school.

>> I don't think it has. All they ever hear about other Web2.0 like
>>Facebook and Bebo is how dangerous they are for kids.
>
>Sheesh. Cars and bikes are far more dangerous for kids than Facebook
>and Bebo. That's why kids are taught the rules of the road, to always
>wear bike helmets, to always buckle up in the car, and they get driver
>training.

Part of my day job is getting that sort of training about using the
Internet, into schools. So far most of them have only got as far as
teaching the students how to operate Powerpoint (yes I know that's not
an Internet application), and installing filters to try to keep them off
YouTube during lessons.

>> But I'm beginning to think that finally maybe Twitter has the right
>>profile for this application.
>
>Again, why limit yourself? Use all the tools available.

One step at a time :)
--
Roland Perry

rdobbins at arbor

Jul 5, 2009, 3:31 AM

Post #32 of 60 (1577 views)
Permalink

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

On Jul 5, 2009, at 5:12 PM, Adrian Chadd wrote:

> Is Twitter making a profit or not?

The other consideration is scalability and reliability. Twitter has
been subject to numerous feature disablements due to capacity issues,
as well as complete outages. Furthermore, Twitter does not appear to
be deployed in a distributed, highly-available architecture.

The Twitter *aggregation/attention model* is what is of great
interest, any merits of the specific service aside.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Roland Dobbins <rdobbins [at] arbor> // <http://www.arbornetworks.com>

Unfortunately, inefficiency scales really well.

-- Kevin Lawton

tme at americafree

Jul 5, 2009, 3:39 AM

Post #33 of 60 (1588 views)
Permalink

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

On Jul 5, 2009, at 6:12 AM, Adrian Chadd wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 05, 2009, Roland Perry wrote:
>
>> Unfortunately, the number of students polling the website for news
>> means
>> it can't cope with the traffic. I don't believe they can justify
>> paying
>> more for better web hosting, just to manage this once-a-year half
>> hour
>> event.
>
> Is Twitter making a profit or not?
>

The word on the street is that they have not yet "found a revenue
model". In other words,
they make no money. They seem very dot com 1.0 unconcerned with this.
That obviously cannot last.

The speculation on how to fix that tend to be either focused advertising

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_ultimate_twitter_revenue_model.php

ecommerce

http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/2009/6/22/A-real-Twitter-revenue-model---gasp-_731.aspx

or Google type data mining models (you can detect trends very
quickly on twitter). These can obviously be combined; who knows if
they would be sufficient.

> This discussion about (ab)using a publicly available message system
> which
> isn't currently being charged for would makes me worried^Wamused as
> hell.
>

I don't think it violates the terms of use. But, yes, as I said
before, this is
a service that goes down. I would not rely on it as the only way to
communicate.

> (Not that I can't see possible ways of making money off twitter -
> especially
> if you offer reliable message dissemination services to companies
> for a fee,
> but AFAIK they aren't doing this at the moment.)
>
>

No. I haven't even heard this mentioned as a possible revenue model.
Good idea, though.

Regards
Marshall

>
> Adrian
>
>
>

Regards
Marshall Eubanks
CEO / AmericaFree.TV

marc at let

Jul 5, 2009, 3:40 AM

Post #34 of 60 (1577 views)
Permalink

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

>
>> Is Twitter making a profit or not?
>
> The other consideration is scalability and reliability. Twitter has
> been subject to numerous feature disablements due to capacity
> issues, as well as complete outages. Furthermore, Twitter does not
> appear to be deployed in a distributed, highly-available architecture.
>
> The Twitter *aggregation/attention model* is what is of great
> interest, any merits of the specific service aside.

exactly, its like VHS versus BETAMAX , not the better system wins,its
just better maketing and popularity.

just my 2 cents

http://identi.ca/macbroadcast/ < the opensource distributed
alternative > http://laconi.ca/

--
Les enfants teribbles - research / deployment
Marc Manthey
Vogelsangerstrasse 97
D - 50823 K�ln - Germany
Vogelsangerstrasse 97
Geo: 50.945554, 6.920293
PGP/GnuPG: 0x1ac02f3296b12b4d
Tel.:0049-221-29891489
Mobil:0049-1577-3329231
web : http://www.let.de

Opinions expressed may not even be mine by the time you read them, and
certainly don't reflect those of any other entity (legal or otherwise).

Please note that according to the German law on data retention,
information on every electronic information exchange with me is
retained for a period of six months.

orion at pirk

Jul 5, 2009, 3:43 AM

Post #35 of 60 (1580 views)
Permalink

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

On Sun, 5 Jul 2009, Roland Perry wrote:
>> There's the temptation by some of companies to leverage the latest
>> technology to appear "cool" and "in tune" with customers, but by far and
>> large, when something goes down customers either do no nothing, wait, or
>> call in. I think the best use of everyone's time is to make sure their
>> call
>> center/support desk has the capability to post an announcement to those
>> that
>> call in.
>
> It's a High School. They don't have a "support desk" (or more than handful of
> phone lines [1]). Even the local radio station can't cope with one call per
> school asking them to broadcast the news that they have closed due to bad
> weather.
>
If your resources are that tight, do what our local school district
did, mandate that all bus schedules will only be available on the web
site.

>> And then make sure something gets posted to the website.
>
> Unfortunately, the number of students polling the website for news means it
> can't cope with the traffic. I don't believe they can justify paying more for
> better web hosting, just to manage this once-a-year half hour event.
>

Roland, sounds like you should have a few "public service"
announcements saying that school closures will be delivered via a
certain twitter username. Also send a flyer home with the students.

The radio station can pick up the twitter feed like everyone else, and
announce closures. That is the way a certain group of people are doing
it in the middle east right now, word gets around and word gets
out... In your case, the community will know quickly, all from a
couple of people logging into twitter and sending a few messages.
Sounds like a simple, ideal solution given your budget constraints.

--
steve

tme at americafree

Jul 5, 2009, 4:01 AM

Post #36 of 60 (1581 views)
Permalink

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

On Jul 5, 2009, at 6:23 AM, Roland Perry wrote:

> In article <4A4FD58B.2000703 [at] gmail>, JC Dill <jcdill.lists [at] gmail
> > writes
>> Even easier, you make an email address on your system that is an
>> alias to posterous. So they send to "post [at] schoolsystem"
>> which .forwards out to posterous, which posts to the school blog,
>> myspace, facebook, twitter,
>
> It doesn't have any of those, that's the point really.
>
> Is twitter the one I should get them started with first?

I would say this partially would depend on how and what you want to
communicate. If there is just going to be
one pronouncement per day (the school is up / down / delayed), then
facebook and / or myspace would suggest themselves.
They are to date free, and the students will know what they are. I
would start with facebook.

If you look at the #AuthorizeNet situation, there was a lot of back
and forth. Will the schools have a need for
back and forth ? If they do, then, yes, twitter might be part of the
solution and you might start with it. It's free, cross-platform, and
you can also assume that the students (if not their parents) know what
it is. This might also be a good for teachers and
the school to communicate, say by DM (direct messages).

Note that this will take people answering questions / dealing with
issues on twitter. Specifically, someone would have
to pay attention
to it during any quasi-emergency period - do the schools have such a
person ?

Also, if the school looses power in a storm, is there a backup means
of getting to the Internet ?

Regards
Marshall

>
>
>> Show them how a radio station can retweet the info
>
> It's have to be automated as there are hundreds to do over a periods
> of a few tens of minutes (the schools don't generally announce they
> are closing until they see how many teachers made it to work, and
> that's not long before they have to open - students get marked down
> for being late, even in bad weather, so can't delay setting out from
> home; it's an interesting operational model.)
>
>> and then announce "to get info on school closings, follow us on
>> twitter at...."
>
> http://twitter.com/trentfmnews (but it's not exactly high traffic)
>
>> and everyone can send the info TO the radio station and get the
>> info FROM the radio station quickly and easily.
>
> The radio station would probably be overwhelmed if they got much
> more than one tweet per school.
>
>>> I don't think it has. All they ever hear about other Web2.0 like
>>> Facebook and Bebo is how dangerous they are for kids.
>>
>> Sheesh. Cars and bikes are far more dangerous for kids than
>> Facebook and Bebo. That's why kids are taught the rules of the
>> road, to always wear bike helmets, to always buckle up in the car,
>> and they get driver training.
>
> Part of my day job is getting that sort of training about using the
> Internet, into schools. So far most of them have only got as far as
> teaching the students how to operate Powerpoint (yes I know that's
> not an Internet application), and installing filters to try to keep
> them off YouTube during lessons.
>
>>> But I'm beginning to think that finally maybe Twitter has the
>>> right profile for this application.
>>
>> Again, why limit yourself? Use all the tools available.
>
> One step at a time :)
> --
> Roland Perry
>
>

Regards
Marshall Eubanks
CEO / AmericaFree.TV

jbfixurpc at gmail

Jul 5, 2009, 4:08 AM

Post #37 of 60 (1582 views)
Permalink

RE: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

My gosh, <sarcasm> Ok, how about we use Facebook, myspace and the other
assorted community websites/services, no better
yet lets use AOL! </sarcasm>

Can we kill this thread please (for those that are still on AOL that's PLZ)

This list is for professional content, not for boasting about high school
websties/services that will die
out in the next year or so.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steve Pirk [mailto:orion [at] pirk]
> Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2009 6:43 AM
> To: Roland Perry
> Cc: nanog [at] merit
> Subject: Re: Using twitter as an outage notification
>
> On Sun, 5 Jul 2009, Roland Perry wrote:
> >> There's the temptation by some of companies to leverage the latest
> >> technology to appear "cool" and "in tune" with customers,
bunch of $h1t, bunch of $h1t...
bunch of $h1t, bunch of $h1t...
bunch of $h1t, bunch of $h1t...
bunch of $h1t, bunch of $h1t...
bunch of $h1t, bunch of $h1t...
bunch of $h1t, bunch of $h1t...
bunch of $h1t, bunch of $h1t...
bunch of $h1t, bunch of $h1t...
bunch of $h1t, bunch of $h1t...

mpalmer at hezmatt

Jul 5, 2009, 4:32 AM

Post #38 of 60 (1564 views)
Permalink

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

On Sun, Jul 05, 2009 at 11:01:43AM +0100, Roland Perry wrote:
[snow day notifications]
> Unfortunately, the number of students polling the website for news means
> it can't cope with the traffic. I don't believe they can justify paying
> more for better web hosting, just to manage this once-a-year half hour
> event.

There are web hosting providers whose 18c/year hosting plans can't handle a
few thousand requests to a static page over a period of maybe 15 minutes
without falling over? The mind boggles.

- Matt

martin at airwire

Jul 5, 2009, 5:59 AM

Post #39 of 60 (1566 views)
Permalink

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

Aleksandr Milewski wrote:
> On 7/4/09 7:50 AM, Roland Perry wrote:
>
>> What I'm trying to anticipate is the objection to *also* posting to
>> Twitter, which might be raised on the grounds that it's too
>> "unofficial", or "unsupported" or something like that.
>
> Anecdotal, of course, but I found twitter to be very useful during the
> SF Bay Area fiber cuts a few months back. I was able to fairly quickly
> get reports of who was down (UnitedLayer) and who wasn't (everyone
> else), and made some good contacts, some of whom I've done business with
> since (Cernio).
>
> Set up a twitter account for outage/event notifications, and don't
> *ever* use it for marketing.
>

I'd agree on this one.

We use it for outage/event/coverage expansion notifications.

Originally, we thought a blog style website somewhere outside our
network was the way to go, but twitter has so many more angles, like RSS
feed capability, an API to integrate it somewhere on your website and
mobile clients.
On top of that, you can update it via SMS if needed.

The hype some people are pushing twitter on, I can't follow, but for
those type of notifications, it's perfect, also because it's not part of
your own infrastructure.

Kind regards,
Martin List-Petersen
--
Airwire - Ag Nascadh Pobail an Iarthair
http://www.airwire.ie
Phone: 091-865 968

lists at internetpolicyagency

Jul 5, 2009, 6:03 AM

Post #40 of 60 (1563 views)
Permalink

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

In article <0D357934-85DE-4935-8F58-02F5FCC1DC8A [at] americafree>,
Marshall Eubanks <tme [at] americafree> writes

>I would say this partially would depend on how and what you want to
>communicate. If there is just going to be
>one pronouncement per day (the school is up / down / delayed), then
>facebook and / or myspace would suggest themselves.

There's going to be a handful a year. Such as "school closed today due
to snow". or "remember - school closed today for staff training" [a
curious British phenomenon].

>They are to date free, and the students will know what they are. I
>would start with facebook.
>
>If you look at the #AuthorizeNet situation, there was a lot of back and
>forth. Will the schools have a need for
>back and forth ?

No, if the school's closed, it's closed. No debate allowed.

>Note that this will take people answering questions / dealing with
>issues on twitter. Specifically, someone would have to pay attention
>to it during any quasi-emergency period - do the schools have such a
>person ?

Such a person could be designated.

>Also, if the school looses power in a storm,

Schools in urban areas here very rarely lose power in storms. All the
cables are underground. Of course, losing power would be another excuse
to close the school :)

>is there a backup means of getting to the Internet ?

A laptop with a 3g modem would suffice, or for Twitter someone with a
suitably configure mobile phone.
--
Roland Perry

lists at internetpolicyagency

Jul 5, 2009, 6:06 AM

Post #41 of 60 (1563 views)
Permalink

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

In article <20090705101237.GC14222 [at] skywalker>, Adrian
Chadd <adrian [at] creative> writes
>Is Twitter making a profit or not?
>
>This discussion about (ab)using a publicly available message system which
>isn't currently being charged for would makes me worried^Wamused as hell.

I've seen debates about whether it's possible to monetise Twitter.
Operationally, it's an issue if they fail financially, but I don't think
the investment in setting up an account is large enough to worry about.

Counter-intuitively, I've probably seen more subscription-based services
fail, than free ones.
--
Roland Perry

lists at internetpolicyagency

Jul 5, 2009, 6:10 AM

Post #42 of 60 (1568 views)
Permalink

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

In article <9589B202-ED92-4C49-98EE-EEBAA43C87AA [at] americafree>,
Marshall Eubanks <tme [at] americafree> writes
>as I said before, this is a service that goes down. I would not rely
>on it as the only way to communicate.

I'd be proposing it as an additional way to communicate[1], but people
could come to rely upon it.

[1] the present system seems to be those few students who can get
through to the school then SMS the news to their friends.
--
Roland Perry

lists at internetpolicyagency

Jul 5, 2009, 6:16 AM

Post #43 of 60 (1571 views)
Permalink

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

In article <Pine.LNX.4.64.0907050334130.23511 [at] mail>, Steve Pirk
<orion [at] pirk> writes

>> It's a High School. They don't have a "support desk" (or more than
>>handful of phone lines [1]). Even the local radio station can't cope
>>with one call per school asking them to broadcast the news that they
>>have closed due to bad weather.
>>
>If your resources are that tight, do what our local school district
>did, mandate that all bus schedules will only be available on the web
>site.

The school doesn't have any buses. About 80% of the students walk (the
average distance maybe a little over a mile) and most of the rest get
taken in their parents car.

>Roland, sounds like you should have a few "public service"
>announcements saying that school closures will be delivered via a
>certain twitter username.

That's what my objective is - to build a sturdy enough case for the
school to have a twitter account to use during these events.

>Also send a flyer home with the students.

Only about half of those ever reach home (no-one knows where they end
up, but it's probably the same place as all those lost Biros).

But if the school had a twitter account I'm sure the news would spread
rapidly. Most of the students spend hours online every day, even if the
school doesn't.

>The radio station can pick up the twitter feed like everyone else, and
>announce closures. That is the way a certain group of people are doing
>it in the middle east right now, word gets around and word gets out...
>In your case, the community will know quickly, all from a couple of
>people logging into twitter and sending a few messages. Sounds like a
>simple, ideal solution given your budget constraints.

I hope so.
--
Roland Perry

lists at internetpolicyagency

Jul 5, 2009, 6:19 AM

Post #44 of 60 (1563 views)
Permalink

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

In article <20090705113248.GP1499 [at] hezmatt>, Matthew Palmer
<mpalmer [at] hezmatt> writes
>There are web hosting providers whose 18c/year hosting plans can't handle a
>few thousand requests to a static page over a period of maybe 15 minutes
>without falling over? The mind boggles.

Apparently so. Of course, they could be deliberately throttled, rather
than run on inherently low-bandwidth kit. Which raises the issue of
whether such throttling schemes should take account of short bursts.
--
Roland Perry

lists at internetpolicyagency

Jul 5, 2009, 6:21 AM

Post #45 of 60 (1565 views)
Permalink

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

In article <4A50A3C9.3080009 [at] airwire>, Martin List-Petersen
<martin [at] airwire> writes

>for those type of notifications, it's perfect, also because it's not
>part of your own infrastructure.

From an operational resilience point of view, that's a very important
feature.
--
Roland Perry

martin at airwire

Jul 5, 2009, 6:37 AM

Post #46 of 60 (1567 views)
Permalink

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

Roland Perry wrote:
> In article <4A50A3C9.3080009 [at] airwire>, Martin List-Petersen
> <martin [at] airwire> writes
>
>> for those type of notifications, it's perfect, also because it's not
>> part of your own infrastructure.
>
> From an operational resilience point of view, that's a very important
> feature.

It's the main reason for choosing something like twitter, blogspot etc.
If you want to communicate an outage, it might be as bad as your
infrastructure is gone, even though that you'd might hope, that you've
designed your network in a way, that it never happens.

But let's just take the scenario, where some event basically whipes your
ASN of the face of global BGP :) . It doesn't have to be a physical
outage, that causes it.

Talking about monetizing twitter, there's a very simple approach, just
based on this type of service:

Service Providers, Carriers etc., that use Twitter can pay a monthly fee
for the service and twitter sends them responses, private messages etc.
by more organized means.

Just my 2c on another approach, but I can see that happening and I
wouldn't mind paying a few bob for the service.

As for some responses on this tread and also some reactions from a few
customers (childish, "my kids use twitter, i don't", etc.):

- some people think twitter is a hype, that's ignorant in my eyes. Sure
it's overhyped by some, it doesn't make twitter a hype.

- some people think twitter is a child's toy. It can be used as such,
but that's not it's primary function or intention.

- some people say it's the next Google. I can pretty much see, where
that idea comes from. Real time search, while Google didn't pick very
fast up on the fires (Seattle, Toronto), you'd be able to find tweets on
them within minutes on Twitter. It would take hours before any of it
appears on Google.

- and as the last thing, with companies like AT&T, authorize.net and
various others using it for service notifications or interaction with
customers, my above point actually is just even more valid.

Calling it a lame web 2.0 is pretty much off, when it's actually used
for something sensible.

Just my 2c

Kind regards,
Martin List-Petersen
--
Airwire - Ag Nascadh Pobail an Iarthair
http://www.airwire.ie
Phone: 091-865 968

lists at internetpolicyagency

Jul 5, 2009, 7:15 AM

Post #47 of 60 (1564 views)
Permalink

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

In article <4A50ACB7.6070901 [at] airwire>, Martin List-Petersen
<martin [at] airwire> writes
>Calling it a lame web 2.0 is pretty much off, when it's actually used
>for something sensible.

I seem to be trying to find the middle ground between members of the
public who think "The Internet isn't appropriate because they didn't
teach it to me in college 20 years ago" and those who say "Web 2.0 isn't
appropriate because they didn't teach it to me in college 5 years ago".

Shouldn't we at least be giving it the benefit of the doubt?
--
Roland Perry

martin at airwire

Jul 5, 2009, 7:41 AM

Post #48 of 60 (1575 views)
Permalink

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

Roland Perry wrote:
> In article <4A50ACB7.6070901 [at] airwire>, Martin List-Petersen
> <martin [at] airwire> writes
>> Calling it a lame web 2.0 is pretty much off, when it's actually used
>> for something sensible.
>
> I seem to be trying to find the middle ground between members of the
> public who think "The Internet isn't appropriate because they didn't
> teach it to me in college 20 years ago" and those who say "Web 2.0 isn't
> appropriate because they didn't teach it to me in college 5 years ago".
>
> Shouldn't we at least be giving it the benefit of the doubt?

Since when has, what has been teached in college ever been a defining
standard for what is happening on the internet or what the trend in
computing is ?

A lot of people never touch Linux during studies, and don't get any of
it in college, however are faced with it in the corporate or public world.

Kind regards,
Martin List-Petersen
--
Airwire - Ag Nascadh Pobail an Iarthair
http://www.airwire.ie
Phone: 091-865 968

jcdill.lists at gmail

Jul 5, 2009, 8:17 AM

Post #49 of 60 (1562 views)
Permalink

Re: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

Roland Perry wrote:
>> There's the temptation by some of companies to leverage the latest
>> technology to appear "cool" and "in tune" with customers, but by far and
>> large, when something goes down customers either do no nothing, wait, or
>> call in. I think the best use of everyone's time is to make sure
>> their call
>> center/support desk has the capability to post an announcement to
>> those that
>> call in.
>
> It's a High School. They don't have a "support desk" (or more than
> handful of phone lines [1]). Even the local radio station can't cope
> with one call per school asking them to broadcast the news that they
> have closed due to bad weather.
>
>> And then make sure something gets posted to the website.
>
> Unfortunately, the number of students polling the website for news
> means it can't cope with the traffic.
Really? Um, wow. How big is this school? Is the webserver on an ISDN
line?
> I don't believe they can justify paying more for better web hosting,
> just to manage this once-a-year half hour event.
This is a case where it makes *perfect* sense to offload emergency
notifications to another, larger system such as twitter, *as well as*
post to the school website (ideally via a blog, so you can use posterus
to do both actions in one email). There's no fee, the cost to "set
up"[1] is your time to securely configure a posterus account and a list
to send to posterus (see below) and then to send an announcement post to
posterus (and thus post on the school blog and on twitter) and to send
an email to all students and parents notifying them so they can follow
the school's announcement feed on twitter.

jc

[1] To setup: create an announcement mailing list with a name like
post72045gh [at] school - the name is kept private. The mailing list
will send to posterus (and yourself - do NOT use this list to send to
regular users - if you want to do that make a different list, a public
list). This prevents students from sending out snow day emails by
forging the school's secretary's email address and sending to posterus
themselves - they would need to guess the name of the mailing list and
send "from" that name to posterus to forge a snow day email.

For even more security, set the list to no approved posters. The people
who are authorized to send out the announcement will be authorized to
*approve* posts from non-members (who are everyone). Anyone on the
school staff can post (but still, keep the address private, only
distribute it to those who need to know!). The posts are held for
moderation and are sent to the people who can approve, and they have to
click on the approval link and approve the post before it gets
distributed. Test this system with the people who will use it, so that
they understand what happens if they are the first one to click on the
approval link, and what happens if someone else is first (no messages
left to approve). Also, make sure they can remember the password for
moderating the private email list - the whole thing grinds to a halt if
none of them can remember their password at 4 am when they try to send a
snowday announcement and it remains stuck in the distribution list and
never gets out and posted. The usual system people use to remember an
infrequently used password (of having a password on a note by the
computer in the office) doesn't work at 4 am when everyone is at home.

jc

Skywing at valhallalegends

Jul 5, 2009, 9:20 AM

Post #50 of 60 (1564 views)
Permalink

RE: Using twitter as an outage notification [In reply to]

Hmm... doesn't that kind of defeat the point of using Twitter instead of your own infrastructure to begin with, aside from adding another (Posterous) single point of failure for all your communication mechanisms?

Perhaps it is not so important for snow days vs. outage situations, but it seems to me like it would be simpler and more reliable to go directly to the source and not use Posterous.

(Besides, I suspect the chances are reasonable that between mail/www/Twitter, you're going to have a low set of users in the other social networking sites crowd who don't have any overlap to begin with. Diminishing returns?)

- S

-----Original Message-----
From: JC Dill <jcdill.lists [at] gmail>
Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2009 08:18
Cc: nanog [at] merit <nanog [at] merit>
Subject: Re: Using twitter as an outage notification

Roland Perry wrote:
>> There's the temptation by some of companies to leverage the latest
>> technology to appear "cool" and "in tune" with customers, but by far and
>> large, when something goes down customers either do no nothing, wait, or
>> call in. I think the best use of everyone's time is to make sure
>> their call
>> center/support desk has the capability to post an announcement to
>> those that
>> call in.
>
> It's a High School. They don't have a "support desk" (or more than
> handful of phone lines [1]). Even the local radio station can't cope
> with one call per school asking them to broadcast the news that they
> have closed due to bad weather.
>
>> And then make sure something gets posted to the website.
>
> Unfortunately, the number of students polling the website for news
> means it can't cope with the traffic.
Really? Um, wow. How big is this school? Is the webserver on an ISDN
line?
> I don't believe they can justify paying more for better web hosting,
> just to manage this once-a-year half hour event.
This is a case where it makes *perfect* sense to offload emergency
notifications to another, larger system such as twitter, *as well as*
post to the school website (ideally via a blog, so you can use posterus
to do both actions in one email). There's no fee, the cost to "set
up"[1] is your time to securely configure a posterus account and a list
to send to posterus (see below) and then to send an announcement post to
posterus (and thus post on the school blog and on twitter) and to send
an email to all students and parents notifying them so they can follow
the school's announcement feed on twitter.

jc

[1] To setup: create an announcement mailing list with a name like
post72045gh [at] school - the name is kept private. The mailing list
will send to posterus (and yourself - do NOT use this list to send to
regular users - if you want to do that make a different list, a public
list). This prevents students from sending out snow day emails by
forging the school's secretary's email address and sending to posterus
themselves - they would need to guess the name of the mailing list and
send "from" that name to posterus to forge a snow day email.

For even more security, set the list to no approved posters. The people
who are authorized to send out the announcement will be authorized to
*approve* posts from non-members (who are everyone). Anyone on the
school staff can post (but still, keep the address private, only
distribute it to those who need to know!). The posts are held for
moderation and are sent to the people who can approve, and they have to
click on the approval link and approve the post before it gets
distributed. Test this system with the people who will use it, so that
they understand what happens if they are the first one to click on the
approval link, and what happens if someone else is first (no messages
left to approve). Also, make sure they can remember the password for
moderating the private email list - the whole thing grinds to a halt if
none of them can remember their password at 4 am when they try to send a
snowday announcement and it remains stuck in the distribution list and
never gets out and posted. The usual system people use to remember an
infrequently used password (of having a password on a note by the
computer in the office) doesn't work at 4 am when everyone is at home.

jc

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