11th
The Fail Whale
When twitter is down, or out of bandwidth, this image appears. This image is supposed to represent failure, or twitter’s inability to scale to follow its monumental growth.
And yet, people love it.
It’s now been fondly dubbed by twitter users the “fail whale”. There’s t-shirts, and a fan site, failwhale.com. I have a fondness for it now too; what’s up with that? Well, it has to do with hope, I think. Hope in something bigger than ourselves, hope in something imperfect and not so predictable. Hope in something that is such a simple idea, it unites people, beyond all measure. The fail whale is a symbol of the gallant struggle against adversity; there is a similarity here between this and Obama’s campaign to an extent. It is this hope for a “combo breaker”, or an entity that disrupts paradigms and truly shifts everything.
For us in 2008, that was twitter, and Barack Obama. Barack, as amazing a man as he is, had no smooth road to the Presidency. If there wasn’t struggle and opposition and centuries of sameness, his message of hope and change would have fallen on deaf ears. And yet now we stand weeks away from a historic inauguration. All this because of struggles and failure, on our part, to not have made history sooner. In that way said failures actually made the reverse happen, because Obama new how to use it to his advantage.
That’s the key.
Twitter, though, may not have been so strategic with its use of the fail whale. Clever, yes, as that image is of a beluga whale, known as the canary of the sea. It’s known to “twitter” underwater. Thus the birds rescue it so it can be heard again. Something like that. But its all because of what twitter has provided people — an opt-in, massive community to listen and participate with. Streamlined, focused thoughts often useful and very human.
It is because of this empowerment twitter is dear to so many, and it is because of this the fail whale is so dear. It is, like Obama’s logo and the man himself, a symbol for hope and bigger things. And so users don’t mind when they see the whale. In fact, it makes me smile, every time.
Thus if you create something that gives, or legitimately promises to give change, or at least a new avenue to new understandings, people will forgive missteps along the way. Just be as open as twitter is about it. Then you will be supported even more.
Maybe even, your failures will be on t-shirts.
