Twitter Nears Doomsday

Last night, Twitter reached a milestone and an apocalypse. Hailed the Twitpocalypse, the number of tweets exceeded 2,147,483,6471. At first glance, this number seems like a typo, but in reality it is the largest number that can be stored as a data type known as a signed integer. When the number of tweets surpassed this number, some twitter apps failed.

The first fail came from Twitterific, an app for the iPhone. The program stopped immediately after the maximum number was passed. This creators of the app were apparently aware of the potential event, but felt they were prepared. Their preparedness now says “YAJL error 3″ when users try to use the service. Ironically, users can follow updates on the app such as when it will be usable again by following @Twitterific on Twitter.

Atebits program Tweetie experienced a lesser affect with only its searching capability in the Mac and the iPhone version being affected. In the meantime, users can use a free iPhone app such as Twitterfon or Twitterlator or make sure you update to the latest version of a Twitter client.