O'Reilly Community

From a comment left by Blaine Cooke in the Chapter 1 excerpt posted by O'Reilly Media this week, it is clear that the following passage needs clarification:

"In April 2008, vice president Lee Mighdoll (@mighdoll) and chief architect Blaine Cook (@blaine) left Twitter following another surge in registrations and a period plagued by server downtime and account spamming."

This comes from a section about the Twitter whale becoming a cultural icon ("The Rise of the Fail Whale"). This part of the book talks about the problems the company was experiencing with growth, which included technical problems scaling as well as turnover in personnel. In Blaine's reading of this passage, the implication is that he left because of the problems, or worse was to blame for them. It wasn't my intention to cast blame or make a causal connection.

It is also true that the most visibly stressful time for the Twitter servers came after the employee departures, in May and June 2008.

So ... April 2008 was a rough month. Lots of things to deal with at Twitter. Not Blaine's fault.