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Twitter Service Issues, Still…

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

This entry was posted on Friday, January 9th, 2009 at 7:41 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

47 Responses to “Twitter Service Issues, Still…”

  1. Peter Durand says:
    January 9, 2009 at 7:18 pm

    Thanks for posting the status. I really enjoy the gadget. It helps my productivity immensely!

  2. NicP says:
    January 10, 2009 at 2:35 am

    It appears other gadgets don’t have the same problem. I can post from Twitter itself and it feeds to BeTwittered on my homepage but I can’t tweet form the gadget on the homepage.

  3. robert says:
    January 10, 2009 at 9:26 am

    It appears that other twitter programs may have been having problems, 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.

    Thanks,
    Robert

  4. Mark Marshall says:
    January 10, 2009 at 5:31 pm

    Hey man…

    So sorry you’re going through this. Hang in there, brother. And thanks for the detailed update.

    M.

  5. Landon says:
    January 10, 2009 at 6:06 pm

    Thanks for the update bro. A lot of other people and I appreciate all of the hard work you put into BeTwittered to keep it up, running, and filled with useful features. Hang in there and thanks again.

  6. robert says:
    January 10, 2009 at 6:12 pm

    Thanks guys! The encouragement is very much appreciated.

    Things are going very well in updating BeTwittered so far. I’m feeling very confident that I’ll have basic time lines working in a few hours (sans work sites with firewalls) Then I can start to deploy the changes.

  7. Tennille R. says:
    January 10, 2009 at 10:33 pm

    This really sucks, and is fustrating but from your posts I can see that you guys are working hard to fix the problem. Thanks for the updates on an awesome program.

  8. kondziu says:
    January 10, 2009 at 11:18 pm

    Good luck and thanks for all the hard work!

  9. Kelly says:
    January 10, 2009 at 11:32 pm

    Thanks for the update and the hard work. BeTwittered is my favorite gadget :)

  10. robert says:
    January 10, 2009 at 11:36 pm

    Thank you all. Bedtime for me. I can’t think clearly any longer, but then again, I can hardly every think clearly. I’m just a wee bit nuts, ask @nintender ;-)

  11. HUKI365 says:
    January 11, 2009 at 2:00 am

    Yeah, good work mate, thanks for your efforts.

  12. rmg says:
    January 11, 2009 at 2:16 am

    you do not appreciate something until it is gone ;) thx for all your efforts in trying to fix your great gadget.

  13. Fred Janssen says:
    January 11, 2009 at 4:01 am

    Betwittered has data again!!!!
    Thanks!

  14. tha_rami says:
    January 11, 2009 at 5:23 am

    Long live the joys of having your program malfunction due to external reasons. Been there, done that – aged me 5 years instantly.

    Take your time, and thanks for the awesome gadget ;) .

  15. Jeff Lutz says:
    January 11, 2009 at 6:15 am

    I appreciate Betwittered, because I’m not allowed to install any of the clients at work. So, it has become my “twitter client” of choice. Load up my iGoogle page and I have the constant updates.

    Thanks guys for getting it working.

  16. Uwe says:
    January 11, 2009 at 7:25 am

    Don’t know what Fred Janssen sees, but for me, still not working.

  17. Leslie says:
    January 11, 2009 at 8:13 am

    Twitter updater isn’t working either. This is a bummer. I rely on BeTwittered and Twitter Updater quite a bit!

  18. pomomama says:
    January 11, 2009 at 8:18 am

    thanks for working on this. i’m missing my BeTwittered so much

  19. robert says:
    January 11, 2009 at 11:03 am

    Still working on it, and Twitter (Alex Payne specifically) is being very helpful.
    Thanks,
    Robert

  20. mrstmath says:
    January 11, 2009 at 12:53 pm

    Robert,
    Thanks for your dedication to getting BT up for us. Like Leslie, I rely on BT gadget in iGoogle at school. It is my lifeline of choice and I appreciate your hard work!

  21. kimberly says:
    January 11, 2009 at 1:34 pm

    Thanks for the status update and for working on the issue!

  22. Matt Hooper says:
    January 11, 2009 at 4:42 pm

    I’d like to add my thanks to the list – I appreciate BeTwittered and all your efforts, Robert!

    BeTwittered is the best Twitter gadget for iGoogle imo and I rely on it at work to be discreet (love the option to hide icons) and keep up to date with my indispensable Twitter stream!

  23. kelly says:
    January 11, 2009 at 7:03 pm

    thanks robert, for your updates. betwittered is my favourite gadget too. i’m lucky – it’s still the school hols here and i can simply have the twitter page open. but if you’re not up and running in 2 weeks time boy…j/k! :-D

  24. robert says:
    January 11, 2009 at 7:05 pm

    2 Weeks! I’d be lucky if that didn’t kill me. :)

  25. rachel_a says:
    January 11, 2009 at 9:43 pm

    Thanks for the updates. I can’t wait for it to be up again either. Didn’t realise I relied on BT this much!!!

  26. christof.lapd says:
    January 12, 2009 at 12:25 am

    Service up and running! At least for the moment. Thank you, iGoogle back with tweets! :-) Good start into the week!

  27. simon says:
    January 12, 2009 at 3:57 am

    Hi – I’ve also noticed that twurl links in betwittered don’t work – I use firefox. You might want to check that out too!

  28. Feline says:
    January 12, 2009 at 4:14 am

    Thanks for keeping us updated. I use BeTwittered at home, at work, and from my crappy mobile phone. So I’ve been keeping my fingers crossed that you can get this sorted out. I miss my BT! Thanks for taking so much time to troubleshoot and maintain BT for all of us!

  29. Spicoli says:
    January 12, 2009 at 9:25 am

    Thanks for the updates and a big thanks for all that you do. Deeply appreciate the work you are doing for all of us.

  30. Bridget says:
    January 12, 2009 at 11:24 am

    Thanks for all your hard work.

    We love you

    B x

  31. lockpro says:
    January 12, 2009 at 11:31 am

    Still down as of Monday, 2:30 EST. Noticed one poster said it was back up, but not for me.

  32. weatherangel says:
    January 12, 2009 at 11:56 am

    Thanks for working on the issue ;) I too use BT from work, and was happy to read the update — thanks for linking right to it in the form! Now I know why and that I just need to wait.

    Good luck getting the fix in! Looking forward to using the google gadget again soon!

  33. Mark Marshall says:
    January 12, 2009 at 12:40 pm

    It’s been up and down all day. Looks like the kinks are still ironing themselves out.

  34. robert says:
    January 12, 2009 at 12:46 pm

    Hi Mark,

    Yes, I’ve noticed the same. We should start to see service returning to normal, but it may happen in a spotty manner. I’m not sure of Twitters internal infrastructure, but it could be a while due to a config rollout, caches, etc.

    Thanks!

  35. pomomama says:
    January 12, 2009 at 7:55 pm

    BeTwittered now scrolls a few pages for me but alas, still no posting tweets for me! still missing my BeTwittered

  36. Fran says:
    January 13, 2009 at 12:30 am

    No posting tweets for me neither yet!!!

  37. Chris Hoff says:
    January 13, 2009 at 12:33 am

    BeTwittered still isn’t working for me.

    Chris

  38. Uwe says:
    January 13, 2009 at 1:37 am

    Same here, still not working.

  39. Fernando says:
    January 13, 2009 at 1:46 am

    not working for me either

  40. Wolfger says:
    January 13, 2009 at 4:49 am

    Still not working (or, rather, reading very sporadically, and I can’t post). Twitter is teh suck. Thank goodness half the people I follow are on Identica!

  41. christof.lapd says:
    January 13, 2009 at 5:41 am

    @lockpro It seemed to work, but was not stable. Gone again since monday afternoon (Germany)

  42. deleoner says:
    January 13, 2009 at 6:46 am

    still not working for me either.

  43. robert says:
    January 13, 2009 at 7:34 am

    Thanks to everyone for posting updates, and for the support. I’m hoping that today the blacklisting is lifted. If, for some reason it is not, I’ll post another update with my plan for moving forward.

    Identica and TWiT Army Canteen users have not been affected, and I see no reason to think these services will be affected.

    Now, back to my day job…blech.

  44. Robbie says:
    January 13, 2009 at 7:41 am

    I do get the occasional good service where I can see up to date twitters from friends, but when I try to post it doesn’t work.

    Good to read you found out what the problem is. I hate using twitter.com as the site doesn’t load properly for me sometimes, so have always relied on betwittered.

    Thank you for the updates and hopefully be back to normal soonish.
    Good luck

  45. Tweet says:
    January 13, 2009 at 11:27 am

    Thanks for keeping the updates running and good luck with the cache server and removal from the ban list, surely it is down to individual Twitter abusers that have caused Twitter to impose a ban? So why punish BeTwittered? It is a great gadget.

  46. pomomama says:
    January 13, 2009 at 12:27 pm

    yay! i managed two tweets from BeTwittered and my page scroll is working.
    thank you – hope all is well now!

  47. robert says:
    January 13, 2009 at 12:33 pm

    Blacklist lifted by Twitter. Back online, officially. My thanks to @al3x (alex payne)

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