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Twitter Blog (6 unread)

Twitter Glitter

Posted: July 5th, 2008, 10:10am CEST by Biz

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WARNING
EMITS SHOWERS OF SPARKS
SHOOTS FLAMING BALLS AND REPORTS
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Home Tweet Home 2

Posted: July 2nd, 2008, 8:16pm CEST by Biz

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This is our first week in the brand new Twitter HQ. There will be lots more photos as we finish setting things up and do some more construction here and there but overall, the new space is really comfortable and inspiring. I just snapped a few quick photos with my phone and sent them to Flickr. By contrast, check out our old office featured in MIT Technology Review (where I stole the title of this blog post).
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Replies Are Back, Improvements Continue

Posted: June 29th, 2008, 11:45am CEST by Biz

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We deployed a change on Saturday which brought the Replies feature back for Web and RSS. We use Replies as much as anyone else so we were not happy when we discovered that it was threatening the overall service and required disabling for maintenance. In addition to bringing back Replies, this deploy also cleaned up some code and fixed some bugs.

For folks who love Twitter and read popular technology blogs like TechCrunch, Friday's comparison to a multi-car pile-up seemed fair. With the Replies tab disabled since Tuesday and a frustrating outage on Thursday morning, it felt like a roadblock for us too.

Last week's emergency repair technique is a symptom not just of increasing activity and growth but of a process, approach, and architecture with room for improvement. Every time we update a component, we take another step toward better performance. There's lots of work ahead but we are moving forward on improvements that address not just service performance but also our implementation process.

We're settling in to our new office space this week—it has a panoramic view of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge. For those who don't live in the Bay Area, the Bay Bridge is currently being rebuilt to handle more traffic and to withstand major events like earthquakes. We now have a huge visual reminder outside our office window every day.
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Setting Up A Workstation for Twitter's Newest Engineer

Posted: June 25th, 2008, 12:48pm CEST by Biz

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Andrew Lorek comes to Twitter from BEA Systems, Inc where he worked as a senior software engineer doing both interaction design and engineering implementation. Andrew will join us on July 7th as an Engineer mostly focused on front-end, user facing work. Welcome, Andrew!
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Welcoming Bijan and Jeff

Posted: June 24th, 2008, 1:57pm CEST by Biz

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We're happy to announce two new members of our investment team: Bijan Sabet with Spark Capital in Boston and Jeff Bezos of Bezos Expeditions in Seattle. Bijan has also accepted a seat on our board of directors. We're looking forward to the guidance and advice both will bring to Twitter. Existing partners Union Square Ventures in New York City and Tokyo-based Digital Garage exercised their pro rata rights to participate in this round as well.

Project: Runway

Twitter will become a sustainable business supported by a revenue model. However, our biggest opportunities will be worth pursuing only when we achieve our vision of Twitter as a global communication utility. To reach our goal, Twitter must be reliable and robust. Private funding gives us the runway we need to stay focused on the infrastructure that will help our business take flight. We will continue hiring systems engineers, operators, and architects, as well as consultants, scientists, and other professionals to help us realize our vision.

"A solid man of Boston..."

We met with an impressive line-up of folks over the course of two weeks last month. On our trip to Boston, Bijan Sabet and his partners at Spark Capital made a big impression on us. Bijan has a strong sense of where Twitter is heading and sees our service as a new form of communication with the potential to have a real impact in the world. He's also "super excited about the possibilities." Check out Bijan's blog to learn more about him and what he thinks of our partnership. Also, be sure to follow @bijan on Twitter.

Seattle's Best

Jeff Bezos is said to have displayed intense and varied scientific interests at an early age. Having worked on Wall Street as a computer scientist, built a network for international trade, founded Amazon.com, and launched the human space flight startup Blue Origin, Dr. Bezos (through Bezos Expeditions, his personal venture investment company) serves as more than an investor and advisor because he is also an inspiration to all of us at Twitter. Jeff's attention to business process details and distinctive, "honk-like laugh" are similarly admirable traits as far as we're concerned.

We're thrilled with the team that's coming together around Twitter and looking forward to more good things to come.
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Introducing John Adams and Rudy

Posted: June 23rd, 2008, 11:03pm CEST by Biz

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Note: Images above may be jokey representations.
Next month, Twitter's operations team will double in size. We're really excited to announce that Rudy Winnacker has decided to move on from Google where he has worked as a Systems Engineer System Administrator for the past 5 years to be with us at Twitter. Rudy will settle in at his desk on July 14 as a Twitter Operations Engineer.

On July 7th, John Adams will have a desk at Twitter as an Operations Engineer as well. This John Adams is very much alive and joins us from previous companies such as Apple and iFilm. Rudy and John will join Jeremy and Jay in the growing Twitter Operations department—Jeremy and Jay are very happy to have the help.
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