In an attempt to show that he is holding Twitter’s technological feet to the fire for their recent IT meltdown, Michael Arrington, in a brief article in yesterday’s Washington Post, poses the tough question:

“Is it true that you only have a single master MySQL server running replication to two slaves, and the architecture doesn’t auto-switch to a hot backup when the master goes down?”

Why is this article in the Washington Post? I doubt even one per cent of the Post’s readers understand SQL database technology, so with statistical margin of error, it’s fair to say no one reading the Post would understand this.

Not only is the piece not written in terms most readers can understand, it’s boring, it’s repetitive of what has already appeared on Twitter’s blog and on TechCrunch, and it comes from someone who isn’t an expert on SQL databases in the first place. So where is the editorial value here? And isn’t Michael Arrington the one who shuns traditional media like the Washington Post because it’s all happening in the blogosphere, baby?

And any idiot knows if your server is already correctly configured, you can obtain the master status and then use mysqldump to take a snapshot! (If you want to get into the tech jargon game, all you have to do is go to MySQL help info online to grab some impressive tech crap like I just did.)

Arrington closes by saying Twitter is being “constructively responsive to criticism.” I disagree. Saving that for another post.

It’s a testament to the madness that is going on in communications that we have come to this point. The circle will be completed when Valleywag picks up Arrington’s piece and headlines it “Arrington and WAPO: bizarre master/slave hot swapping sex scenario is only way to fix Twitter.”

Tags: Twitter, Washington Post, mysql, Michael Arrington, TechCrunch