Yes, a social networking website stopped working for a few hours, as the bbc reports.  It really was too bad that I couldn't catch up with my cousin Geoff's updates about mayoral duties in "Farm Wars" (all names have been changed). 

Lessons learned?

• Even with the most sophisticated software development teams, sometimes testing will not replicate all scenarios, and the only way to find bugs is to release the software into a 'real' environment.
• However, software roll-backs in  this kind of situation should be a 'given'.  If software changes are too complicated to roll back, then they're too complicated.
• Don't base your social life on one website.  If you need to organise to go out, how about using the phone (yes, readers, some younger web users do rely on facebook for organising their social lives).
• Given that some web users rely on facebook for organising their social lives, is that a business opportunity?  Almost certainly.

We've had a lot of interest in twitter since we mentioned our auto tweet function in a customer newsletter.  What we've done is added the ability for content editors tweet what they have just submitted using our content management system.  So when you add a piece of news or a blog article, the next page says "tweet this?" and shows an (editable) preview of your subject line along with an automatically generated link.  Once you click 'send' (and log in to twitter if you aren't already) your item is posted.