Serious Problems in Twitterland
Posted by Nick O'Neill on April 23rd, 2008 9:17 AM
This morning Peter Kafka broke the news that Blaine Cook, the lead architect at Twitter, is out for good. This news follows up a weekend of substantial issues and then this morning, Mike Arrington revealed that Orli Yakuel, a fellow blogger, had all of her direct messages revealed on the site. She was then forced to close her account.
According to Peter Kafka, Blaine Cook left because his partner was moving to the United Kingdom to pursue her career. Not sure why Blaine would leave one of the hottest startups in the Valley but it makes sense that personal issues could conflict. I would have tried to work something out where I was part-time in England and part-time in the Valley but then again, I don’t know all the details of what went on.
As the demand grows for Twitter the need for experienced engineers increases. Today also marked the launch of Twitter in Japan. The site also comes with advertising at the top of sidebar. Tokyo was already one of the most popular cities on the site so it makes sense that they’ve decided to launch there. Among all the problems comes a little bit of success with this recent launch. I wonder how it will impact Twitter downtime if they experience similar growth that they are experiencing domestically.
(P.S. Today is no longer Twitter Tuesday so I won’t be only writing about Twitter but figured this was news worthy information)
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:22 am
Thanks for the news. I hope they get a good substitute and work things out. At a startup such things are not uncommon. The concern is that we are all getting so used to Twitter that hope nothing bad happens.
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:56 am
Looks like Orli’s issues were with Group Tweet, not Twitter’s API.
April 24th, 2008 at 8:45 am
[…] yet again that another top engineer is leaving the ranks at Twitter. This comes only a day after it was announced Blaine Cook was leaving from leaving on amicable terms. So what the hell is going on over at […]