International Law

Like many Twitter uses I've been very frustrated by the amount of time Twitter has been down recently.  So I found Brian Alvery's proposed business model for Twitter very amusing:

I finally figured out a business model for Twitter. It's advertising based and it only works if Twitter doesn't solve their scaling problems.

The way I see it, the most the Twitter user base needs Twitter to be running smoothly is about fourteen hours a day. That leaves ten hours a day of those cute "please try again later" screens. As long as they can continue to add more people than they lose every day, I could see what I have in mind being a sustainable stream of income. Any large ad network -- like Overture, Federated Media or AOL -- would jump at the chance to get their pool of advertisers in front of this eternally patient, gullible audience.

I totally deserve a Twitter board seat for this.

Read more here.  More seriously ReadWriteWeb has put together a list of Twitter alternatives, including Pownce, FriendFeed and Jaiku.  I've used all of them but none of them have the community of Twitter.  However as everyone keeps saying there is only so long you will put up with the down time before you start building that community somewhere else.  Intriguingly ReadWriteWeb also posits some offline alternatives:

If you'd rather not make a switch to another service, try these offline alternatives to Twitter:

• Phone
• Events
• Parks
• Meetings
• Fairs
• Parties/Clubs

The best way to help Twitter deal with their issues without being negative and to also get your social fix is to take a break from the service. When's the last time you called some of your online friends? What about the last time you left the house to socialize? Take a break from the online world and socialize with those that are within your immediate area to physically meet and greet you.