We now have some warning feeds that are being posted to Twitter on a portion of our eastern accounts. We are making the East Coast our first priority because the Atlantic Ocean has recently developed a pitching machine that throws hurricanes. The east will begin to see observations return shortly after the warnings are fed back into accounts.
We will move west once we have assured we that have provided reliable coverage for the east. You may see an observation feed appear on some accounts, but it will usually just be one posting to help us confirm they are going out. We will not restore any observations to normal service until we have fully restored all warning feeds. We want to avoid having anyone seeing observation feeds appear and assuming that warnings are working as well.
We were caught totally unprepared for Twitter’s OAUTH conversion and take full responsibility for the outage. As we mentioned right after the outage, Twitter has confirmed to us that they are sticking with OAUTH moving forward, so this event will not occur again.
We have taken quite a while to recover from this, but we were presented with obstacles that few, if any other company faces posting feeds to Twitter. CNN posts to roughly 28 accounts and that is a very high number of accounts compared to most other companies. Swas Inc. posts to over 1600 accounts.
We also have a system that was designed to be mobile; our feeders are figuratively rolling around on wheels and they rarely remain in one location for any length of time. This is also not the norm for most websites that interface with Twitter, as most sites are in one location and remain there. It is however part of the reason our feeders were so incredibly sturdy, reliable, and fast prior to the OAUTH crash.
Our remedy had to integrate with our highly mobile design, and with 1600 accounts compounding the problem it took quite a while just to design a way to adapt to the OAUTH changeover. Implementation is not going to occur at lightening speeds for the same exact reasons. One of the biggest reasons is that OAUTH has to be installed manually, by a human being, not a machine.
It may take up to 2 weeks to reach the west coast. During this period, we are suspending our normal checking of replies and daily maintenance of our FaceBook account, as we have a very limited staff and need all hands on deck. You can contact us by sending replies through our SWAS_Blog account, but our response back to you will most likely be very slow.
With the new design we should be able to retain all of the benefits and capabilities of our original design, despite the some of the shackles that placed on most users of OAUTH. Once all feeds are restored, you will still benefit from same record speeds you enjoyed before, and we will still be able to make those feeds even faster than they are now.
We apologize again for any inconvenience and truly appreciate all of the support and encouragement we have received. During one of the most frightening and humiliating moments in our company’s history, this warm support really inspired all of us, and we cannot thank everyone enough.
