Save Our Server: Use Twitter
In early December, 30 GMs converge on a hotel somewhere in America, while 40 bazillion Mariner fans converge on USSM and hit the refresh button until our server blows up, trying to find out if the Mariners have traded anyone yet. It’s an annual tradition at this point.
This year, I’m providing this handy post in an effort to save our poor site from you relentless rumor mongerers. For as weird as it may sound, Twitter has officially become the place where 99.9 percent of all news stories break, and there’s no reason to pound our servers when you can pound theirs instead. You will find out about M’s news from various writers on twitter faster than you will find it from us. So, I have created a Twitter list of Mariner writers for you to follow.
Even if you don’t use twitter, just go to the link above, and every message sent by Shannon Drayer, Geoff Baker, Larry Stone, Ryan Divish, Mike Salk, and us will appear in one single page. Refresh the crap out of that page all you want, I don’t care.
When news does break, you’ll get it there first. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll let us survive through the winter meetings without going down. Please.
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46 Responses to “Save Our Server: Use Twitter”
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Brilliant.
I see BrockAndSalk are on there. Do they take turns writing? Does Brock supply the consonants and Salk the vowels? Just how does that work?
Also, I don’t see Shannon Drayer on there (and her adorable pic — she may be the only journalist in baseball who can make Ichiro loom like Richie Sexson)
Looks nice.
Awesome, as usual.
If this isn’t THE BEST baseball site on all of the internets I’d like to know which one is better.
(Lookout Landing being right there too)
Any chance you can make that available via an RSS feed as well?
Hey, this helps alot.
Awesome; bookmarked.
Nevermind, she’s there now. Yay.
Fantastic site, thank you very much. Is that going to remain up even after the meetings?
Also, excellent repetitious use of the words “pound” and “going down”.
Wow, I’ve never actually looked at a sports-related Twitter thread before.
These are new epic levels of rumor-mongering.
That’s tremendously useful, and now part of my home page tabs for the next week at least. Thanks!
So in addition to everything else, Twitter also provides bandwidth relief to narrow-interest websites during events? Paraphrasing:
Twitter: Is there anything it can’t do?
Make a profit?
Save the USSM server during a ridiculous game event / amateur draft.
Ahh waiting for the winter meetings is agonizing, this is gnna be a long week
Thank you, this is very useful.
Whatever else someone might say about Geoff Baker, very nice comment regarding Bay as a $5.99 pretzel. We really are treated to a wonderful group of media with Stone, Drayer, and Baker. I know Baker is everybody’s favorite foil, but we could be much, much worse off.
Ferocious_gentleman: 141 characters?
Seriously…my first reaction to Twitter was “wow…so Twitter thought blog posts were too long and well thought out? Today is the very first day I’ve actually gone to Twitter.
Thanks USSM. I feel dirty.
The Jason Bay trade-offs between Cameron and Baker are entertaining me right now.
Oh. My. God.
In every sense of the words.
Yeah, I feel dirty, too.
Also: you can count me among those who are absolutely dumbfounded as to how a social networking site, with an entry limit of 140 characters, has become such a reliable source of news.
That said, I have the page bookmarked, and will be checking it religiously. Such strange times we live in, when we don’t have to wait 24 hours for new news/baseless speculation.
It’s been a while since we had to wait 24 hours. Now 24 seconds seems like a bit much. Like…you had to wait to take the glove off after Chone’s physical to text us that he passed? Thanks, for the newsreel, Edward R. Murrow!!
Just out of curiosity, why don’t you guys host on EC2? In times of peak demand like now, you could just fire up another server instance and load balance.
I’m all for twitter, but i’m sure the community here would donate for the extra infrastructure costs of guaranteeing that the site will be up.
What time do the meetings start?
It’s like the hall of mirrors, just viewed through a peephole.
And get put in the poorhouse overnight. Seriously, I looked at using EC2 to host a non-profit site and there just was no way it would work with any kind of demand. Just playing around with a single web user (me) for a couple of days I racked up several dollars in charges. You’d have to be doing some significant e-commerce for it pencil out; as generous as the USSM community is, they’re not going to float that kind of donation. Unless Amazon has some kind of non-profit fee structure I’m not aware of, or they’ve changed their pricing in general, I can’t see it making sense for USSM.
Also, since we’re talking Twitter, you can follow the hyphen there too (his latest is his thoughts on Figgins from a pitcher’s perspective).
hi-freakin’-larious
Thanks. I finally have a good reason to open a Twitter account.
To help save time, which of the folks in the Twitter List have the greatest Value Over Replacement Tweet?
Unless, of course, Twitter goes down for scheduled maintenance 🙂
Salk & Drayer will be on-air at 11 from Indy.
As an aside, NPH had a fine running gag about the limited character length when he finally succumbed to Twitter Peer Pressure
Berg, everyone on Dave’s list is worth following.
And doesn’t seem to mind his nickname. Did he get that here?
This would be so helpful if the web filter at work didn’t block social networking sites. Boo
Try accessing it through secure http instead:
https://twitter.com/d_a_cameron/mariner-writers/
Buster Olney reports Seattle unlikely to get involved on Jason Bay.
Please be true!
Mustard’s got the right idea. What’s it called when you repost tweets on USSM?
Being part of the problem?
I have no idea what its called. I dont use Twitter or have access to it at work.
Joser, how is posting that being part of the problem?
Dave,
What’s the chance of adding #Mariners or something like that to pull up other posts?
Oh, never mind. That search is a mess.
And now Twitter is down for maintenance for the next 30 minutes
OK it was quick maintenance, and seems to be resolved
Mustard: If all the Mariner tweets are just reposted here, then “40 bazillion Mariner fans converge on USSM and hit the refresh button until our server blows up, trying to find out if the Mariners have traded anyone yet.”
That’s the problem.
OK, it might only be the 20 bazillion who can’t get to twitter from work or who otherwise are too lazy to go anywhere else. But the whole point of this is that we’re not supposed to be using USSM for breaking news because that breaks USSM. Come here for the analysis after the trade (or at least when one seems very likely) rather than a repost of every little #mariners update from every journalist in Indianapolis with a Twitter account.
Twitter has been down twice for maintenance already!
BTW, I still think this is the best summary of Twitter overall. It has its place for breaking news, I guess, but too often it’s just Narcissus’ pool rendered as a web page.
thank you dave. this is excellent.