How Twitter Creates a Social Sixth Sense: "Twitter substitutes for the glances and conversations we had before we became a nation of satellite employees."

There's been a lot of interest in how things run under the hood here at Twitter. If you're one of the curious, join me for a geeky interlude.

Twitter started out on Rails because it's the best framework for a rapidly evolving web application. We've never had more than three engineers working on Twitter since its inception, and with that small team we've managed to accomplish a ton thanks to the elegance of Ruby and the power of Rails. We can happily say that neither Ruby nor Rails will be out of the Twitter picture any time soon. We stand by the superb engineers at Powerset in saying that "Ruby as a whole is ready for the big show."

We hit some scaling stumbling blocks a few months back, but not because Ruby or Rails was working against us. Once Twitter reached a certain amount of traffic we were forced to rethink our architecture; you don't build a messaging system the same way you build a content management system. We set about developing custom solutions both inside and outside our Rails application. We also made good use of web scaling standbys: caching, database optimization, more hardware, and shared experience. Throughout this scramble to scale, Ruby and Rails were assets for their speed of development and creative, helpful communities.

For stressed engineers, it's tempting to think that another solution - anything but what you're using now! - will solve all your problems. Maybe you start dreaming up the perfect framework on a whiteboard, or maybe you start scouring the web for the fastest, newest, most experimental technology. In the long run, picking a foundation you're comfortable with and making sensible iterations towards your performance goals will yield a bigger win. You have to be careful while iterating: watch your database, test thoroughly, and be ready to roll back when things break (and they will).

With great tools, constant learning, and hard work, you can be successful without reinventing the wheel. Rails is our chosen wheel, and we're rolling right along with it. If you'd like to know more about our successes with Ruby and Rails, check out our presentations from the Silicon Valley Ruby Conference 2007 and RailsConf 2007. We hope to have some code to share along with our experience in the near future.

Labels: engineering

Announcing the Multimap Twitter Bot: "The Multimap twitter bot helps you to access the same maps, directions and local information that you find on multimap.com by simply sending direct messages via twitter. You can also find the closest wikipedia entries to a location and get directions to the closest wikipedia entry!"

This is our address (in case you need to get in touch).

The folks from Live Earth are Twittering in a really cool way. Each update is also an easy tip -- a simple way to make our world just a little bit greener. For example, if we all fixed our leaky faucets we'd save $1.3 billion a year. So, follow Live Earth on Twitter and get in the game!

Rocketboom rocks. They have a new sponsorship model and launched it first with Twitter. That's cool beans. Plus, they have a Twitter account. Twitter hearts Rocketboom.

Using Twitter to track his diabetes attracted attention from other diabetics as well as a health reporter from a local NBC affiliate. Check out Scott's blog post about the experience and watch the clip.

Going to Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference? Want to know who else there is using Twitter? Our friends at IconFactory have updated the much loved Twitterrific application to let you know when other Twitter users are near!:

Twitterrific now scans for other users on the local network using Bonjour. When your friends are "close by" their avatar image will have a white outline. You can also use Cmd-B to see a list of all people on the local network that are using Twitterrific and their last tweet. Hopefully, this will be effective in environments where Twitter users are in the same physical space (such as WWDC). Thanks to Jack Dorsey for the idea.

If you have a Mac and will be attending, download the WWDC edition of Twitterrific (even if you won't be attending, you can see who on your local network is also using Twitter). See you at the keynote!

Every day we discover new and interesting uses of Twitter. Today is no exception. Our friends at Dell have created a Twitter account for the Dell Outlet, with limited Twitter-only discounts! Text FOLLOW DELLOUTLET on your phone to our shortcode 40404 to be instantly alerted whenever Dell offers an amazing deal!

Twitter user Derek Brooks is featured in The Des Moines Register today. "The service has actually helped Brooks cut back on communication. Rather than separately texting all his friends to learn their whereabouts, he just sends out a Twitter message."