#1019 Tweet Storm

So here’s the headline I read the other day: “Google Service Outage Stirs Tweet Storm.”
This is strange on so many levels.
What would it possibly mean to someone from another century? Say Mark Twain. Service Outage? They didn’t even have electric lights back then. I doubt that anyone in Mark Twain’s time could even conceive of a public works system for which an outage was a problem. No lights. No cable. No broadcast TV. No radio.
We’re having a stagecoach outage today. The horses are tired.
But forget that, you only need to drop back a couple of decades and there was no such thing as Google, and certainly no Google for which someone would think of a service outage.
Google was a search engine. Doesn’t work? Go to Yahoo or AOL. Remember AOL? But now a service outage on Google is a cause for alarm. And not just any alarm; an alarm of folks who are engaged in the Twitter phenomenon.
Twitter people tweet.
Ain’t that tweet. I tot I tah a puddy cat.
Tweeting is the ultimate testosterone counterpoint. Yo dude, I got off my Harley at the tavern and started tweeting where I was so the gang could meet me.
So nowadays, we are Googling. We have a service called Google. We are tweeting. We have a service called Twitter.
Google sounds like something you once had when you were head over heels in lust and looking at the object of your desire. You had googley eyes. Now you have googley eyes when you’ve been sitting at your monitor too long surfing the web all day.
Surfing the web. Mark Twain would suppose you would find it difficult to do. Webs once tended to stick or hold things. Not that Mark Twain would understand what the heck you meant by surfing either.
But I think he would be totally amazed at the concept of a “tweet storm.” If only because it seems like a contradiction in terms. A tweet so insubstantial and weak. A storm so strong and threatening.
A tweet storm. Like being attacked by puppies.
Or ravaged by a flock of...butterflies.
America, ya gotta love it.