32Hours

My Apologies. If it is something I can fix, I will. My guess is that BeTwittered has been blacklisted again for making too many requests of the Twitter servers. I’ve not yet gotten a response as to whether this is the case or not.

Update (2:24pm pacific time) : The problem should be fixed, but take some time to propagate on the Twitter servers.  If you want to see more detail, and my comments (which get a bit bi-polar, I might add) please click the comments link below.  I’ve had a rough day, and I’m going silent! unless things don’t get better as expected.

UPDATE (3:53pm Pacific time)  I let Alex at twitter know that we’re still not back online.  It should have been OK by now.   He’s going to nudge the ops team to get the to check it out.  BeTwittered *will* be back online, it’s just a matter of time now.  Hopefully not long.  I am out of town and not at a computer often, though I will check in regularly.

UPDATE: ((ra-2/2/2009 8:23 AM)  We’re still down, but I have continued to keep in contact with the Twitter team.  BeTwittered should be back soon.  I’m sorry to say I can’t say exactly when, but the operations team was apparently very busy working hard due to expected superbowl traffic.  Hopefully they’ll get to opening the gates for BeTwittered this morning. I also want to say I appreciate the supportive comments, especially since this is the second time BeTwittered was “banned”  recently.  Thank you all!  It shouldnt be long now.

Thanks,
Robert

I want to ensure that anyone getting the, somewhat snarky, “Twitter is not responding in a sane manner” message is not too alarmed.

It appears that Twitter, who’s servers were reportedly doubled for the U.S. Presidential inauguration, may already be having capacity problems today. The servers are responding slowly and a bit randomly. If you are using BeTwittered, please be aware that I am watching the betwittered.com server closely. If you are using BeTwittered-Canteen or BeTwittered-Identica, you are so far unaffected, although all three are hosted on the same server.

Thanks,
Robert

UPDATE / NOTE: I’ve found a bug today.  If you post and it fails, the error message is cleared by the timeline refresh that follows.  This means, simply, that if Twitter does not respond and accept your Tweet today, you do NOT get the right feedback from BeTwittered.  My apologies.  I will fix this so you get a “failed send” message in the future.

Robert

The blacklisting of BeTwittered by Twitter was lifted.  First and foremost, thanks to everyone who left encouraging messages.  I’m still amazed at how many people voiced their support.

Also, I want to share the short story so everyone knows what happened.  I will post a follow up for anyone interested.  I think there may be some lessons to be shared…

Twitter still appears to be having problems with their API. The API is the interface that programmers use to connect to Twitter. My apologies to everyone being frustrated by the issue. I am looking at possible band-aids, but don’t have high hopes. I think we’ll just be waiting this one out. This appears to have started yesterday, so I imagine the Twitter engineers are working hard on it, if not with a bit of fire on their pants.

UPDATE: It appears that other twitter programs may have been having problems also, but are now working.  I’ve still not gotten a response from anyone at Twitter, but am working hard to find out why their servers are not responding.  Servers hosted at “The Planet” were blacklisted around the same time this problem started, so I’m currently trying to find out if BeTwittered.com was affected, or if 1and1 hosting was also blacklisted.  1and1.com is the hosting provider for BeTwittered.

In the mean-time, I’m sorry for the lack of service.

UPDATE: (ra-1/10/2009 5:16 PM)  I’m working on a non-proxied version of BeTwittered while waiting to find out if Twitter.com has Blacklisted my hosting service.  By morning I expect to have BeTwittered back up and running, but temporarily missing some features.  Also, there will be issues passing through firewalls as BeTwittered has always done.  That is my next big priority.

UPDATE: (ra-1/10/2009 11:29 PM) I’m forced to give in for the night.  Authentication without BeTwittered.com has been my enemy for the last few hours.  The Good News: Alex Payne of Twitter started working with me today to determine what the cause of the outage is.  I’ve provided him with some basic info to start working with.  I thank Alex greatly for responding on a weekend, and look forward to the results.

UPDATE: (ra-1/11/2009 11:04 AM) Alex Payne at Twitter is still helping out.  I can’t say anything helpful yet, but wanted to post an update so this doesn’t look like a dropped issue.  Also, service may appear to occasionally work,  so don’t get too excited if you get a good timeline refresh every now and then.

UPDATE (ra-1/11/2009 6:34 PM) It appears that the problem should be sorted out tomorrow (Monday here in California)  It turns out BeTwittered was put on a Blacklist, but it was done in error, so should be corrected without issue.  Thanks to everyone for your patience, and the support.  It amazed me how many people left encouraging messages!   Now, just to wait a little..bit…longer…. I’ll sleep better tonight, I’m happy to say.

UPDATE (ra-1/13/2009 7:30 AM) Last night I heard back regarding the blacklisting again. BeTwittered is still blacklisted, but I’m still working with them in order to get this resolved. I was asked to install a caching server and for a time line for the install. I’ve responded, so hopefully I’ll have news soon that BeTwittered will be removed from their ban list.

I’m very sorry for this extended outage.  I wish it were in my control.

NOTE: If you are using BeTwittered-Canteen on the TWiT Army or BeTwittered-Identica on Identi.ca, you are not affected.  BeTwittered itself, and the server, are functioning fine.

Thanks for you patience,

Robert