SAN FRANCISCO -- Twitter's "FailWhale," the cutesy symbol that surfaces when the microblogging site goes down, is turning into a pop culture icon for the Web 2.0 crowd.
The FailWhale error message, an image of a Beluga whalebeing carried by birds, has spawned a fan club, a Facebook group, merchandise bearing the image and spinoff illustrations celebrating the whale. Artist Yiying Li originally created the design as a birthday e-card before Twitter picked it up from a stock-photo site.
On Tuesday night, nearly 200 patrons hit nightclub Shine in downtown San Francisco for the first FailParty, a celebration of Twitter's famous cetacean.
"I'm not sure what to make of it all," said John Adams, Twitter's senior operations engineer, who was recently hired to help fix the site's scalability issues. "Of course, we're happy to see users supporting the service and we're going to embrace that."
Even so, Adams, who was DJing the first half of the event, says slaying the white whale is top priority.
"We wanna harpoon that thing!"
said Adams. "He's absolutely got to go."
Hard-core Twitterers, who use the increasingly popular service to share even their most mundane activities in 140-character-or-less messages known as "tweets," have weathered many Twitter meltdowns.
David Bill, aka Mister Bill, one of FailParty's organizers, insists the celebration of Twitter's famously frustrating growing pains is good-natured.
"People most need cheering when they're down," said Bill, who recalled being involved with several failed startups during the dot-com era. The FailWhale meme represents something bigger than just Twitter's shortcomings, he said -- it's more about forming a community.
Not surprisingly, the party itself was overcapacity.
Twitter's response to the FailWhale phenomena has been mixed.
"People have grown to love Twitter because of the connections it facilitates," said Twitter co-founder Biz Stone in an e-mail conversation Wednesday. "The fact that folks insist on finding ways to connect via Twitter -- even when the system is down for maintenance -- is a powerful reminder of the work we're doing."
The company says it's working on the problem: On July 8, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams posted a report on the service's improved page-response times, noting "sightings of the famous 'Fail Whale' have gone down precipitously."
So, what will happen when Twitter's crew of Captain Ahabs finally fixes the reliability issues and slays the FailWhale?
"Honestly I don't know," said Sean O'Steen, who launched the official FailWhale fan club back in May. "Hopefully the FailWhale will float on the wind and go where he is needed, much like Mary Poppins, finding the next startup in need."
Photo of FailParty and FailWhale image: Yiying Lu
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See also:__
- True Story of a Twitter Marriage Proposal
- Sweetest Tweet Ever? Man Proposes Via Twitter
- Ze Frank Makes Twitter His Colorful Playground
- SXSW: This Year's Twitter? A Simple Scheduling App That Brings Order to the Masses
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