Twitter Expects Hammering For WWDC, Here come the BOOM!

Twitter is as unstable as it is irresistible. It’s shaky two year history (give it a few weeks to bring home its second anniversary) has been marked by plenty of highs, but just as quickly, infuriating lows.

This time, though…this time it’s going to be different. It’s going to greet its users Monday morning, and as Apple’s global fan club descends on Moscone West in San Francisco, physically and/or virtually, Twitter’s going to take its users through it all. From the grand-opening to the Steve Jobs sermon to the wink-wink-you-know- what’s-coming launch party, Twitter’s got it covered. Probably. Maybe. No guarantees. They’re expecting a ten-fold increase over their normal daily traffic count, so wager as you please.

Given the company’s history, they of course know this micro-blogging thing of theirs isn’t fault-proof. 100% is certainly not in-house Twitter terminology. But if Biz Stone’s portrayal today of what’s to come from the Rails-based platform is anything accurate, Twitter may well make it through Monday’s madness as one whole fully-operable bunch of code. As Stone describes it:

“We’ve moved much of the load off our database by utilizing more memcache, employing more read-slave servers, and by fixing some bugs for improved efficiency. This work is in intended to help handle the load and keep Twitter up and running while Steve Jobs talks about all the new products and services Apple has planned. Of course these improvements will continue to serve Twitter beyond the WWDC as well.”

Otherwise, communication breakdown, folks. Which won’t please anyone. Enter, Plan B:

“In the event that our estimates and preparations fail, we have designed a way to keep Twitter updates moving quickly through the system to their respective recipients. We have isolated and created on/off switches for many Twitter features. Should it become necessary to shed incoming load quickly, we can turn off features such as stats, pagination, and several others to preserve the reliability and timeliness of your Twitter timeline.”

Stone also rips a line out of Jobs’s book of commandments, saying there’s “one more thing.” It seems that they’ve put together something to convenience Apple fans eager to quickly learn about announcements 140 characters at a time. Stone reveals little else, though he advises readers to expect an update on the matter soon.