14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter is prepared to handle the immense quantity of additional tweets to hit its servers following the launch of iOS 5, the newest version of Apple’s mobile operating system which boasts seamless integration with the microblogging service.
Twitter engineering VP Michael Abbott was an on-stage at GigaOM’s Mobilize 2011 conference this week. There, he remarked that “iOS is not something we have to brace for.”
And it mostly has to do with the fact that Twitter has already beefed up its infrastructure.
Abbott, who joined Twitter in May 2010, explains: “During the last nine months, there’s been more infrastructure changes at Twitter than there had been in the previous five years at the company. So that whether it be the death of bin Laden, or someone announces a pregnancy, we can handle those issues and you’re not seeing a fail whale.”
However, Abbott does expect the iOS integration to translate into some major changes.
He anticipates “a lot of growth because [Twitter] is going to be on every iOS device. And certainly there’s a good number of those out there in the world,” Abbott said. “It’s going to result in more Tweets.”
Abbott said their microblogging service is now processing more than 230 million Tweets per day. By comparison, only at about 60 million Tweets were sent each day last summer (to give you an idea what growth means for Twitter).
Where do you put that roughly 45 percent of those tweets come from a mobile device.
All in all, Abbott thinks his company’s servers are ready to handle another swelling of their daily intake of tweets.
In other words, Abbott and his engineers are now sitting with their arms crossed, waiting for iOS 5 to hit the masses.
“We have been and continue to be very focused on that simplified experience of Twitter. I think that’s one of the reasons we’ve seen the growth,” Abbott added. “People get it, so people use it.”