New York Times' Bits column reported something remarkable that might eclipse all previously documented records for online business growth. David has overtaken Goliath - in record time.
David is Bit.ly and Goliath? TinyURL. If you use Twitter you know that both of these services offer a way to shorten URL length, critical when you're trying to maximize 140 characters on Twitter.
On Twitter TinyURL apparently made up 75 percent of shared links and Bit.ly, 13 percent in late March. One month later the new %'s are 46 for Bit.ly and 44 for TinyURL.
One big cause for this turn of fate is apparently the switch Twitter made in its default link shortener from TinyURL to Bit.ly. The speculation is that this happened because of outages at TinyURL.
With so many competing services, the new battleground for Web 2.0 isn't eyeballs, it's performance. More than one company has come to understand this fact - some the hard way. If you fail the stress test, it might be the end of your business (unless you're a bank, but that's another story).
Twitter, in what has become Web convention, relies on a Web ecosystem to deliver its popular micro-blogging service. So it can't improve its own performance unless it does a full house cleaning. (BTW, to see how your favorite social networking site compares, you can track weekly performance via the Social Networking Performance Index from Keynote Competitive Research; 1 week sample shown here.)
After more than a decade of the existence of the commercial Web, performance can't be taken for granted. We've come a long way from the sputtering and wheezing days of dial-up, but today's Web complexity is not an issue that can be solved with faster last mile access. For user-generated content sites like Twitter or MySpace, content is constantly changing, site load is unpredictable and there's no guarantee on partner performance.
Web 2.0 has meant more Web site programming complexity, more interlinking parts and partners, and richer content. It is our faster broadband surfing speed that has given license to build more robust Web sites. And our favorite Web sites have already sopped up the speed we got from our DSL and cable lines. Now what? Just moving to a cloud computing vendor is not enough, see for yourself next time you're on Twitter.
Realizing the problem, the industry is not standing still. This summer there are 2 events focused on improving Web performance. Keynote Live! is a free event we're putting on, it starts on June 22nd. Immediately after that is the 2nd annual O'Reilly Velocity conference. Both are located at the San Jose Fairmont. And your Keynote Live! registration qualifies you for a nice discount to Velocity.
Go into your stress test prepared to pass. You've got 2 great opportunities to prepare, mark your calendars: June 22-24, San Jose, California.
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Posted by: Stress management | June 24, 2009 at 10:02 PM
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