Narcissystem still growing rapidly

by on April 15, 2007

DaveTroy, the author of TwitterVision, reports that his Twitter followers has doubled in just the past few hours. Explains why Twitter remains slow for me. Speaking of which, last week there was an interesting conversation between the guy who authored Ruby on Rails and one of the main developers of Twitter (Twitter is built on Rails). A week ago I visited Twitter’s development team and one of the developers told me that they didn’t try to overbuild its system for scale and that now they are going back, looking for performance problems, and building the system to scale up. Sounds smart to me, even though for users it’s proving a bit slow right now. Dealing with such scaling has got to be a daunting challenge. How many teams can say their user base doubled in the past 24 hours?

UPDATE: Steven Hodson chimes in with a “blogosphere reality check” and says we’re all living in a bubble: “The reality is though that outside of our little insular world of blogs and co-presence what we do has no importance.” My answer? Why is Steven blogging then? Ahh, he’s just as narcissistic as the rest of us! The narcissists talking to other narcissists. Hmm.

If you’re sick of my narcissism, just read my link blog. I try to filter out the noise and just present great posts there (out of 622 blogs read). Oh, but, if you really are a Twitter freak you can read my link blog on Twitter. Heheh.

  • Why?

    because I like writing about things I am passionate about :) but to think that tech blogging is the end all be all of our technology and that every little thing we say or do is of tech shattering importance is wrong.

    am I being narcissic .. maybe but I like to think that I bring a healthy dose of skeptisim and reality to the table in the process. If not then the reader can alwys click the next link or press "J"
  • I have as healthy an ego as the next blogger, but most of that kind of talk is just posturing. Like I said, I filter most of that kind of stuff out when I do my link blog. There's lots of crap out in the blogosphere, just like there's lots of crap everywhere. But, usually, I can find 60 to 100 posts (out of 1300) that are pretty damn interesting.

    Important? Probably not. But I think you're also underestimating just how widespread our words can get.

    Explain how I told 15 bloggers I was leaving Microsoft and within 72 hours Waggener Edstrom said I got 50 million media impressions.
  • Hey, I think it's good clean fun. It's geek stuff at the peak. I set up rex.tv for that. Just to have fun, just to say I could do it. It's running LIVE right now. You can watch me type this.

    Is that exciting? No. Will people watch. Maybe. Do I care? Not really. It was fun for me to geek out and say it's done and running.

    http://rextv.nuclearinbox.com/ - live, real time Rex typing... or an empty chair! I just think it's a cool service - http://ustream.tv/

    This will push things forward somehow, as that is the key to everything online or created offline. Pushing it forward and ahead.

    Rex
  • opinion = posturing?

    sure robert your leaving MS might have impacted the technology field - although I am not sure how as I still think you could have had a greater impact by staying - but did that event affect the technology being used to save a child's life in an operating room somewhere?

    Yes you do find some really interesting stuff for which you deserve all the kudos you get. Tou have also done an enormous amount to progress the idea of people being involved with technology but when push comes to shove has any of your many posts saved anyone from living on the streets, has any of them changed the world ouside of technology one iota?

    Yer a good man and within the technology field you have probably been responsible for many changes - some visible and some that may not be seen for some time but in the real world of Mr and Mrs. Joe Average has what has been going on the tech-sphere made any differnce?

    Maybe you have and I've missed it if so I await your correction of my cynical ignorance :)
  • Steven: I never claimed my posting or work had as much importance as someone who saves lives. Not sure where you got that.
  • LayZ
    Steven, reading your blog no one could conclude you are a narcissist. One only has to read Scoble's comment @2 to see the definition of a narcissist. Scoble, how many times does the world have to be reminded of the "impression" you leaving Microsoft had?
  • Robert:

    I never meant to imply specifics. I am just trying to look at all this from a realistic P.O.V. and that as much fun as the tech-sphere; and the whole blogosphere, is to write about that at the end of the day our opinions about what we think and write about in regards to technology has little effect beyond that scope; but we as tech-bloggers fail to see that.
  • LayZ:

    so am I'm getting lumped in with the crap? :)
  • LayZ: it's as good an event as any I know to demonstrate how the word-of-mouth media works and it's an event I know pretty damn intimately. :-)
  • Blogging is a publishing medium. The people who can and do write (and write often) will have influence, just like MSM journalists do (or used to). It really depends, not on if you blog or not, but whether what you say is interesting and/or informative. When I started to write about Imus, an entirely different crowd showed up on my blog than when I write about entrepreneurship. Blogging is not dead, nor is it inconsequential, nor is it the center of the universe. It's part of the experiment in citizen journalism and self-publishing, which is of great consequence. It disintermediates the guys who do nothing but send young writers rejection letters.
  • Christopher Coulter
    You and I in a little toy shop
    Buy a bag of start-ups with the money we've got
    Set them free at the break of dawn
    'till one by one they were gone
    Back at base, sparks in the software
    Twitter the message "something's out there"
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