Twitpocalypse Going Down Today. Are You Ready?

Posted by Kristen Nicole on June 12th, 2009 5:43 PM

Twitpocalypse. It’s the Y2k of the web 2.0 generation, and was originally supposed to occur tomorrow. Twitter has since forced up te Twitpocalypse to 2 pm Pacific today in order to deal with the bug and have all hands on deck. The Twitpocalypse issue comes from a bug in Twitter’s system that may crash third-party Twitter applications when their tweet identifier numbers hit 2,147,483,647. This is the signed integer limit for Twitter apps, and many are close to reaching this number, as the tweet identifier numbers will start turning negative, thus crashing Twitter apps.

Twitter is keeping some of its staff in the office to work on Twitpocalypse, and will be available to developers that run into any possible issues. Twitter has also apologized for not having addressed the potential for Twitter apps to crash at an earlier date. It’s a lesson all startups can learn from, especially as they gain traction and become mainstream in their success.

As the Twitter APIs are in many ways the most beneficial aspects of Twitter, maintaining the platform is a central priority for the company. Twitter has not only moved up the Twitpocalypse over 12 hours, but has brought on additional staff for its API team, reports TechCrunch. While the two occurrences may not be directly related, both are indicative of the value of Twitter’s API to the health and potential of the company to grow.