Yesterday via a post on its blog and via the service itself Twitter let everyone using the service know that it was going to be down today for 12 hours. Of course as circumstance always seem to dictate this news came at the same time that reports were beginning to surface that T-Mobile was shutting its gates against Twitter’s use over their SMS service.

So while there was some grumbling about the downtime it was of the minor kind especially against the implications of what T-Mobile was doing; at least until Dave Winer posted this morning that we should be grumbling a lot more about this downtime of Twitter. He suggests that no other basic form of communication goes down for 12 hours and that if GMail started doing the same thing he’d be switching mail providers.

Well I hate to break it to you Dave but Twitter isn’t GMail and nor is it Ma Bell even though one of her babies is throwing a temper tantrum at it for now. Twitter compared to any of the real Internet services is still a baby not even out crawling around yet. Sure I agree with you that better communication from Twitter as to why such a long downtime is needed would be a good idea but to equate Twitter as being a basic form of communication at this point is getting a little too carried away.

That doesn’t mean that Twitter doesn’t have the possibility of becoming such a service especially when you take into account; as does Tony Hung in his post about the T-Mobile fiasco, the fact that in the US Twitter is being used with increasing frequency by essential services like Los Angeles Fire Department. It is also that kind of early adoption that should tell you Dave one of the reasons why there isn’t an early competitor with any real staying power to go against the growing popularity of Twitter; regardless of the downtime it experiences - planned or not.

The fact is that Twitter has one thing going for it - it is still considered in the wider scope of things to be an amusing little messaging system. This is a big advantage that is going to give Twitter enough breathing room to further entrench itself as the main 140 character quick message system that could become a basic service.

You ask the casual web surfer and SMS user about Twitter and you would probably get a blank stare but that could very well change as more and more essential services discover what the LAFD and even some news service have. Twitter is communication simplified to almost it’s most basic and can be used by anyone with absolutely no training needed. Just sign up and start typing - it can’t get any simpler.

So while you might be upset at not being able to twitter for 12 hours Dave I would like to suggest that your status within the blogosphere would be better spent on what T-Mobile is doing. That is more important on a much larger scale that Twitter doing some growing up.

Listening to: Fatboy Slim - Drop the Hate

Conversation Tags: Twitter, T-Mobile, Dave Winer, Tony Hung