Whither Twitter?

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By Matt Haber

May 5, 2008 | 11:55 a.m.

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Who will ensure Twitter tweets uninterrupted? That's the question posed by Silicon Alley Insider's Hank Williams about the popular wireless and Web-based application that allows users to share their brain farts on the Web in real time. Everyone from Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody ("I'm smoking Virginia Slims today. I've come a long way, baby," 06:43 PM May 03, 2008 from txt) to Slate's political correspondent John Dickerson ("At Dairy Queen with Clinton. She had Blizzard with Snickers I had" [sic.], about 17 hours ago from txt) has jumped on the Twitter bandwagon (bandtwagon?), but what if their tweets wind up in the dustbin of histowy?

SAI's Williams points to a discussion on Techmeme.com and asks:

Is Twitter too important to be left in the hands of Twitter? That's the argument that bubbled up over the weekend. The argument is that Twitter is not distributed. This means that if Twitter goes down no one can Twitter. It also means if Twitter goes out of business, or just screws up, we could lose all of our tweet history.

What will be lost? New Yorker pop music critic Sasha Frere-Jones' reaction to a poem in his magazine by Rae Armantrout, Time's Ana Marie Cox on Arnold Schwarzenegger's tan, tech entrepreneur Jason Calacanis being honest about Duran Duran, and about a million users telling us how bored they are.