free the fail whale!

I feel very sorry for the poor old beast - trapped in a net and being constantly hoisted above the water by these pesky birds - I mean, I know that whales can breathe out of water, but I also know they are much happier in the water... anyway, why do they think a picture of a whale being tortured is going to make us happier about being caught up in their broken machinery? Are they saying: "leave us twits alone you tweeters, if you all just go away and do something else then we can get back in the water and suck on some plankton..."?

The twits have made some basic errors, as might be expected. They try to fix complexity with more complexity, which is like trying to cure a drunk by applying a barrel of whisky... oops our labyrinths are leaking... lets build a collection of labyrinthine monitoring systems so we can while away our days merrily watching just how badly it seeps... and lets add lots more squid in there... are we not clever? Look at our metrics! Almost everyone is now using our API to tweet - does that not show how clever we are?

Nope... try to tweet on the website and you get the tortured whale. Tweeters use the API apps out of desperation! Or, more often, they go somewhere else...

Look twits: your system requirements could not be more simple. Your only challenge is scale. Massive scale. There is an easy way to achieve massive scale, and a difficult way. The difficult way - the way of conglomeration - requires exceptional skill and loadsofdosh, such as only The Goog, and on occasion The Apple can muster. Otherwise, nothing works (think Micros&%t...). The easy way is distribution. Think Skype. Think Bittorrent. Think Internet. That's enough of a hint...

Let's save the fail whale. Cut the nets and set it free. Let the tweeters no longer burden the whale. Leave the whale out of it. Cut the nets and set it free. Let the tweeters do their own work, every one of them. If necessary, shoot those little tweeters who refuse to leave that poor whale alone... the time for placid acceptance has passed. It is now time for action! Free the whale!