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China

Twitter’s China Link: The Fail Whale

By thomascrampton ⋅ August 4, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

Regular users of the microblogging site Twitter have experienced the service’s many failures, but they are not likely aware of the Chinese link.

Twitter - for anyone unfamiliar - is a San Francisco-based service that allows users to send 140-character SMS messages to anyone who wants to read them. It has, in effect, created a new public space for conversation.

The service has proved so popular that its infrastructure has been unable to keep up with the exponential growth. Regular users have become painfully familiar with the image of the Fail Whale that appears each of the (many) times Twitter goes down.

The Chinese link? The Fail Whale was drawn by Chinese graphic designer Lu Yiying, who sold it on iStockPhoto for US$10, according to Jay Oatway of the Hong Kong-based Charged magazine.

Thanks to Twitter’s perpetual failures, Lu’s Fail Whale now features on t-shirts and coffee mugs while other artists create kinetic Fail Whale sculptures.

The Sydney-based Lu Yiying fanned the flames of fandom with a girlfriend (and the official mascot of the fan club) of the Fail Whale, named Eve Whale, Oatway writes.

UPDATE: Yiying just connected to me on Twitter and sent this further information about how she linked in with Twitter

I originally did this image as a personal illustration in early 2007 - a birthday e-card for an overseas friend of mine when I was in my final year study at University - expressing my: Sorry I am failed to be there across the ocean, but here is a little console from my heart. The whale is a self metaphor. Hence the original name I had for that artwork was “lifting a dreamer”.

Then posted on istockphoto as a vector illustration - as a way to showcase my work and make some pocket money - I think twitter brought this image though istock either late in 2007 or early 2008 as a standard license. Which should cost Twitter 10USD, and istock get 5.2USD, in that case - I should got that 4.8USD funnily and sadly. I guess when Biz Stone was buying this image for their
service down time, he didn’t expected that illustration can get a cult following. Lots of people were having discussion on the whale name on Flickr and Sean O’Steen sets up the failwhale.com as the Fail Whale official fan club etc..

I wasn’t aware of that until I got an email from a girl who was using twitter and loves my illustration told me about this.

Other links about her story:

http://drawn.ca/2008/07/21/fail-whale/

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_story_of_the_fail_whale.php

http://www.widgetslab.com/2008/07/07/twitter-3d-fail-whale-widget/

Popularity: 7% [?]

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China, Internet

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Comments for “Twitter’s China Link: The Fail Whale”

  • Ha! Great stuff.

    I hope the popularity of the Fail Whale gives Lu Yiying's career a nice boost.
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thomascramptonconf

Thomas Crampton was a correspondent for the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times for more than a decade, reporting from five continents, writing a column on Asia and covering Asian politics, economics and culture. Currently based in Hong Kong, he writes here about China, the Internet and New Media seen from Asia, while also advising companies on digital communication strategies. For more information click here...