Twitter's lead architect Blaine Cook (pictured, copyright James Duncan Davidson) didn't have much luck during his presentation: no WiFi and no electrical power!

His session was interrupted several times, switching back and forth from impromptu Q&As and back to the formal presentation. Actually, it pretty much looked like a Twitter conversation!

Joke aside, Cook acknowledged that yesterday was Twitter's peak day of activity coinciding with the popular South by Southwest media conference (SXSW). But the developer refuted the idea that Twitter crashed under that heavy load, inspite complaints by some users of slow access, and believed the WiFi network at the conference was the culprit... but at least they did have a little of it... unlike here!

Some other interesting facts that came out of the discussion:

- Twitter had no more than 30 servers, until very recently;
- Access to Twitter's API is 3 to 4 times the level of its Web traffic;
- Twitter spends a lot of money sending those SMS on carriers' networks and is hoping to replace some of that traffic with XMPP.