Twitpocalypse is here
Twitpocalypse is here!!! The end is here!!! Aaaaahhhh!!!!
Wait…. it’s not end of the world yet. We are still alive. Twitter is still up and running. I’m still blogging at Starbucks while drinking a cup of Mocha. SO what is Twitpocalypse?
Twitpocalypse is like the Y2K bug of Twitter. Each tweet has an unique identifier associated to it. The number has exceeded 2,147,483,647 recently on 13 June 2009 at 7:52:04am Singapore time. 2,147,483,647 is the maximum value for a 32-bit signed integer in computing. While twitter itself can handle this scenario, some 3rd party application using twitter might have problem.
Which explains why my favorite iPhone Twitter application, Twitterrific, isn’t working since yesterday morning.
Life is painful without Twitterrific. I tried going back to web based on my iPhone but I miss the interface and features on Twitterrific. I tried installing other Twitter clients on iPhone which is not affected by the Twitpocalypse, but the look and feel are just not the same. I still love Twitterrific.
Let’s hope Twitterrific release a bug fix on Apps store soon.
This Twitpocalypse raise a minor concern. While it is impossible for all developers to cover all aspect and prevent bug like this from happening, there is a need for a central warning system (maybe via newsletter). This will provide developers early warning about potential problems like this and allow them to fix the code before it happens. All sites that open their APIs to 3rd party developers should have such a warning system.
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