“We are determining the cause and will provide an update shortly.” then shortly after followed up with:

“Update: we are defending against a denial-of-service attack.”

They later posted:

“We are defending against a denial-of-service attack, and will update status again shortly.

Update: the site is back up, but we are continuing to defend against and recover from this attack.

Update (9:46a): As we recover, users will experience some longer load times and slowness. This includes timeouts to API clients. We’re working to get back to 100% as quickly as we can.

Update (4:14p): Site latency has continued to improve, however some web requests continue to fail. This means that some people may be unable to post or follow from the website.”

And just today, posted:

“Due to defensive measures we’ve taken against the ongoing denial-of-service attack, some Twitter clients are unable to communicate with our API, and many users are unable to tweet via SMS.

We are working as quickly as possible to restore our full service.”

As we are moving into day two of the attack, things seem to be moving in a forward directly, slowly however. Though we have not been able to tweet through the web, we have managed to post a few tweets through TweetDeck and Tweetie. The question in our minds is “when is Twitter going to take advantage of its potential and start earning some money?” Google and Facebook were hit with the same DDoS attack and had very little trouble nipping it in the bud. Maybe having a general source of revenue had something to do with it, you think? Can’t hire someone who is qualified to be a chief security officer of an entity as huge and socially relevant as Twitter without the bread to back it up. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ignorant to the fact that Twitter is a very well funded organization, but In any case, having some form of revenue surely wouldn’t hurt. Makes you wonder if a new business plan will become more of a front burner project for the little blue bird in the near future. Either way, from all of us Twitter fanatics, Twitter, we send our best wishes to you!

Other Twitter related posts

I was delighted to see that twitter has made a very refreshing, and overdue, revision to their homepage today! Taking a break from a new website I will be launching this weekend, http://twitterbugg.com, i logged out of its twitter account, @twbugg, and when i went to log into my account for 365icon, wham! There it was. Fresh, clean shades of blue clouds and sun rays… and of course, the iconic twitter bird (which looks to be updated as well).

It seems like Twitter has been multitasking lately. They just officially changed the title of “updates” to “tweets” yesterday, and now this. I likey. =) Now if they could only throw in all of the bells and whistles that the 3rd party apps like Tweetie and Tweetdeck incorporate in their user experience. Either way, I’m hoping that the new additions will continue to come out. I use Twitter all day everyday. If my iPhone was shower proof, I would be tweeting about that in the mornings. No, really. But hey, who isn’t addicted to Twitter? One tweet and you’re hooked. Anyhow, good job guys. The homepage looks great. Keep up the good work, and keep the updates and additions coming!  Cheers!