Twitter Went Down Today. Were You More Productive?

Twitter feeds went dark and you could not Tweet at all.

No, it is not the end of the world. Yes, Twitter went down this morning and took popular tools such as TweetDeck and HootSuite with it. Those two depend on Twitter being up and functioning in order to display Tweet streams. So, you found that TweetDeck went blank with nothing coming across. Or HootSuite stopped working and briefly displayed the "Twitter API is down" message. If you are like me, you started to think that it must be my connection to the Internet which is having a problem. Or that my Internet provider is blocking Twitter from coming to me. So, you connect to mobile.twitter.com and get the same results. That is when you start to get the feeling you are completely cut off from the world.

For those of you who look at Twitter more often than you do any work, this is disastrous news. You are probably still recovering from the fact that it was not available for about 30 minutes today. Withdrawals are tough for those who make Twitter part of their lives. What would happen if the Internet went down resulting in far more problems. You would not have any idea that Twitter was down, because you could not check your email or do Google Searches for "Twitter down". But now might be the time to reflect on whether Twitter plays too much a part in your life. If you were having serious problems because it was down, now might be a time to re-evaluate.


The one question which probably cannot be answered with any certainty is whether people became more productive during the time period when Twitter went dark. Since we were not spending all that time looking at Tweets, creating Tweets or ReTweets, it provided an opportunity for us all to do other activities which potentially might benefit someone else. Such as an employer who you are working for. Or even yourself if you are a small business owner. Twitter does seem to consume a large amount of time throughout the day.

The odds are, you were not more productive, even though many would like to believe that you took that time to do other tasks. And some of those tasks may be considered more important than Twitter. There are those who have looked at Twitter as a time waster and a time saver, so the jury is still out on that one. The general consensus is that Twitter does take up time which could be spent on other things. Those who use Twitter and other Social Networking tools see them as a benefit.

So, when a beneficial tool like Twitter stops working, it feels like my entire day has been disrupted. And as a result, my stress level goes up impacting my ability to be productive that day. While some may think that removing a tool like Twitter for a few hours might have a tendency to improve productivity, the reality is that it will impact productivity for the period of time that it is down and for many hours after that time. Social Networking tools such as Twitter have become part of the day to day lives that we live.

If tools like Twitter were to disappear for more than a day or even longer, we would see a drop in productivity as everyone would be going through withdrawal symptoms trying to get over the loss. Did you experience anxiety during the time Twitter was down?