Telephones weren’t reliable until the mid 90s. When Bell made the first telephone call, the concept of laying undersea cables and building global digital switching infrastructure was not only ridiculous (people thought the phone was a dumb idea), but impossible. The success was in trying, not in scaling.

I’m not trying to say that scaling Twitter is impossible. Far from it, scaling Twitter is my day job. However, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a service that makes it easier to find friends for coffee, or find the shortest line for SXSW parties, was a ridiculous idea two years ago. I still get questions about the financial viability of it. Scaling is a commitment, and one you should only make once you’re sure about an idea.

I’ve made no bones about our mistakes. We haven’t done the job as well as we should have. However, at no point were the problems strictly technical in nature, and as Eran is writing over on his blog ( http://www.hueniverse.com/ ) the issues are much more subtle than you’d think.

I hope that clarifies the comments as recorded. Our foremost concern has been and will continue to be ensuring a stable platform; we’ve been working hard on numerous fronts, and that work is paying off. Bad press is horrible, and I’ll be the first to take pleasure in never again seeing a “can Twitter scale?” story, because I think we’ve built something valuable and amazing that deserves to scale.

@Blaine: thanks for the thoughtful reply. I’ll put up a follow-up post today.