A number of bloggers / tweeters from Belgium started a little meme (if you could call it that) of replacing our Twitter avatars with an image of the fail whale.
The idea is that as long as @ replies, IM and so on remain unavailable, it doesn’t hurt to show we’re not happy with the situation. Changing avatars, at least, is more of a bit of fun and not as lame as nagging about it all day.
Today, Twitter also changed the request for replies on its API so that third-party apps like Twhirl don’t work anymore either. That leaves us with
http://summize.com/search?q=username
for seeing where the conversation is going. Or Friendfeed.
It makes you wonder whether Dave Winer is right in doubting Twitter’s chances of ever becoming ubiquitous.
And it makes you wonder what on earth Twitter’s chances for survival are. Meanwhile, all the fun to be had on Twitter is changing your avatar. So why not.
Small update: I just got added on Twitter by blogger Tom Limongello of the UWS Journal. In his latest post he points out a number of Fail Whale related links, including the new and official fan club.
If Twitter ever makes it in the Marketing History Hall of Fame or whatever, it’ll surely be because of this: has there ever been a product or a service so awful, so unreliable, so hated, that people love it so much they’re creating memes and fan clubs over it?
Unique.
Tags: dave winer, fail whale, twhirl, twitter
28 June 2008 at 2:48 am
The electric car.
28 June 2008 at 1:23 pm
Hm. Not a very original idea (if I’m not mistaken, we did something similar in the Newsvine private beta), but it’s worth a shot if it’ll help make a point. Twitter keeps falling apart. :(
28 June 2008 at 1:25 pm
No wait, it was during one of the Digg “revolts”. We all changed our avatars to Supernova17’s when he got banned.
19 July 2008 at 12:28 am
“If Twitter ever makes it in the Marketing History Hall of Fame or whatever, it’ll surely be because of this: has there ever been a product or a service so awful, so unreliable, so hated, that people love it so much they’re creating memes and fan clubs over it?”
Exactly. Thank you! People embrace the failure icon. Most popular 500 Error in web history. That’s why we’re seeing grassroots efforts to save the very emblem of failure (while simultaenously complaining about it!): http://www.savethefailwhales.org/
19 July 2008 at 10:59 am
You know, that may well be the case. It’s almost a pity we’re probably about to see the whale go.