The official Tweetboard blog

This weekend Tweetboard experienced some of the longest downtime in our history while we upgraded our storage system, giving us more room to grow.

When we started Tweetboard we never anticipated the rate in which our message database would grow, we showed you previously how quickly our message database was expanding, and trust me, it hasn’t stopped since then. In the two months since that post our database has continued to grow and is currently at 125million posts. It is great news to see Tweetboard’s growth rate, but we were running the service on a rather limited storage system, which though have great speed and reliability, was inadequate in size, really not leaving much room for expansion.

So now a brand new storage system has been installed giving us much more room to play with, however it wasn’t an easy upgrade process. We were unable to just migrate the data from the old storage system to the new one. The new hardware required a special controller, which meant we had to format the old storage system and reinstall everything fresh on the new system, including the OS, Web Server and all the core service components. So as you can see, a simple hardware update became a full blown system reformat.

Later this week we will have another *short* period where the service will be unavailable as it will be required to take one of the servers down to tweak areas of the new storage system. We appreciate your patience and thank-you all for your support!

We have heard your cries, and it is great to know that so many people can’t wait to get Tweetboard. So starting now we will be releasing a block of 2000 invites to users who have initiated their requests in the past few weeks.

The 2000 invites will be released slowly and you will be notified via Twitter once you are accepted. The approval “tweet” will come from one of two accounts, @microforum or @140ware, so if you’ve been anxiously waiting your invite, do keep an eye on your mentions stream.

Please keep in mind that due to Twitter’s limits on the number of posts we can send per hour/day, it may take a few hours/days to release the 2000 invites. If you still haven’t been accepted in two days time please open up a support ticket with a link to your invite request on twitter.

Going forward, we have seen that people are looking to get up and running with Tweetboard ASAP, so we have made the decision to automatically accept a small block of invites every week. We hope this will substantially reduce the time that you are waiting and keep our queue down.

Tweetboard has been growing for some time now, and it is about time to gain some personality, and one that you can design. What do I mean? Well, the Number one requested feature is about to be released to the public. You will be able to select from a list of official templates, or you can delve in and create a custom design that compliments your site layout.

Style your Tweetboard to match your site!

Before

After

For those that don’t want to dig into the CSS, we are including a few default styles. Activating these is as simple as selecting a pre-set style from a dropdown box and hitting save.

So this is where we all come in, we have created a section on our Wiki dedicated just to Tweetboard styles where you will find user submitted styles as well as tutorials on how to create your own style. We also want to see what you can create, so bring out your creative side and show us what can be done, once you are done, submit a new page along the lines of this one, with a description, screenshot and the CSS used.

Yesterday Oleg pulled a graphical representation on the growth of Tweetboard’s dB. It sure is interesting… it appears our dB is growing at near exponential rate.

Twitter’s API has proven exceptional at serving a LOT of data at amazing rates, especially after we implemented the Realtime Updates notification system. Thank-you Twitter.

I’m really happy with the growth. On the same token, I realize (or maybe I don’t! ) the challenges that this represents moving forward.

Wish us luck!!

We are happy to announce that Tweetboard.com now sports a full featured bulletin board located at bb.tweetboard.com.

Having worked with forum software development for over 5 years, we know the power of community, and more specifically, the benefits that building a community around a web product/service can bring, to both, developers and users alike.

I’ve created a short intro post to our new BB (a.k.a forum) here:
http://bb.tweetboard.com/topic/welcome-to-the-tweetboard-bb-aka-forum-1

Feel free to stop by, and join us in our new community!

PS. The board (powered by awesome bbpress) is integrated with our wordpress install here, therefore you can register here (or there), and your profile will be shared, including your avatar, etc. Works with gravatar too!

Tweetboard Alpha 2 will be debuting in the upcoming hour to over 10 thousand sites near you.

As stated in our previous blog post, Tweetboard Alpha 2 is a full rewrite to the underlying code, resulting in a faster, leaner and more secure Tweetboard. However, the two most notable updates in Alpha 2 are a REDESIGNED Notifier Tab and our REAL-TIME Update Notification System!

The original tab design, although very clear and bold, was not ideal for all types of sites. We realized this shortly after deployment and immediately started working on a revised tab design that would appeal more universally, while being less intrusive. We went through many iterations during the process, but it definitely paid off as we are extremely happy with the end result.

Tweetboard Alpha 2 also features an awesome new REAL-TIME notification system. The original notification system required a page refresh to display “new tweet(s)”, which took away from the “fast-talk” potential of your Tweetboard experience. The new, updated notification system will show you what’s new, *the second* it occurs, both, for updates posted via Tweetboard, AS WELL AS updates posted via Twitter. We feel this is truly a game-changing update, and once you test it out, I’m sure you’ll agree with us.

The most notable updates:

1. Tweetboard Alpha 2 adds COMET technology (more info) to push updates in real-time. “New Post(s)” notifications will no longer require page refreshes. This update adds a new dimension to the TB experience, making it “sort of” addictive, seriously!!
2. 140Ware has received upgraded Twitter API access that will allow *instant* pulls from your timeline. Delays in pulling Twitter timeline updates has been the #1 complaint in Alpha 1, we went from ~1 minute updates to ~2-3 hour updates after the initial launch period due to API limits.
3. Replies to replies and replies to those replies, and the replies to those replies (you get the idea) will be pulled now. Previously it would pull first level replies only, and unlimited nesting for posts published via the Tweetboard. This one is key.
4. To address user’s #2 complaint, we have created a refined notifier tab, especially designed for sites where the original (bold) tab is not ideal.
5. Alpha 2 introduces significant usability updates and an updated default sorting option to encourage activity (latest replies bump “threads” to the top of the list)

We hope you enjoy the new and improved Tweetboard!

Note: Previously approved invites do not need to request a new invite for Tweetboard Alpha 2.

We are happy to announce that Tweetboard Alpha 2 will be launching at 3PM AST tomorrow, Friday, August 21!

Originally we had planned to launch an interim Alpha2 update a few weeks after the official release in June, however, the first Tweetboard embodiment ended up being much more stable than we anticipated, to the point were TODAY, Alpha 1 is holding up nicely with well over 10 thousand approved Alpha invites and an average of over 2 million hits PER DAY.

Tweetboard Alpha 2 is a full rewrite

We definitely learned a few lessons during Alpha 1, many of which lead us to decide recreating the back-end from the ground up. The new Tweetboard is leaner, faster and more secure, HOWEVER, it is not THAT what’s most exciting about Alpha 2, but the game-changing updates it features.

At Zero Hours (3PM Friday) a Blog post will be published detailing the updates in the new version. For now, we’ll leave you with a short list of enhancements in Alpha 2:

• Alternative tab design – A beautiful new tab choice especially designed for sites where the vivid (sometimes referred to as “intrusive”) nature of the original tab is not ideal.
• Surprise (MAJOR) feature to promote increased usage/engagement from your site visitors. This one is game-changing!
• Front-end design updates for increased usability.

Alpha invites closing at hour zero

As the title of this (our first) blog post reads, we are closing our alpha-invites at hour 0, concurrent with the release of Tweetboard Alpha 2. There are a few reasons for this:

1. We’ve surpassed our goal # of testers for Alpha 1, in fact, more than doubled it, requiring only minor updates to our original infrastructure.
2. Alpha 2 introduces a new (super awesome) data exchange approach (best way I’m able to describe it without actually saying what it is ). The new approach *is* more resource intensive than the original approach, therefore we’ll need to gauge our infrastructure needs more closely as we roll out the new Tweetboard.
3. After this release, we’ll go though more speedy iterations, including a roadmap of specific updates for Alpha 3 and Alpha 4 (TBD in another blog post). It will be safer to roll out the planned updates to a set number of users rather than a dynamically (and rapidly) growing user-base.

We expect to re-open invites once again after Alpha 4.

Seeya again in 24hrs!