{"id":6111,"date":"2011-04-01T09:42:24","date_gmt":"2011-04-01T16:42:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/?p=318"},"modified":"2021-08-13T06:58:45","modified_gmt":"2021-08-13T13:58:45","slug":"backing-up-all-data-is-too-hard-backblaze-switches-to-backing-up-twitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/backing-up-all-data-is-too-hard-backblaze-switches-to-backing-up-twitter\/","title":{"rendered":"Backing Up All Data Is Too Hard: Backblaze Switches to Backing Up Twitter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/blog-twitblaze.jpg\" alt=\"TwitBlaze\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"bzdropcap\">It\u2019s no secret that providing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">online backup<\/a> for all of the data on peoples&#8217; computers takes a lot of hard drives. To be specific, four tons of drives show up every week to our data center to back up our customers&#8217; school papers, birthday videos, and baby photos&#8230; So many baby photos.<\/p>\n<p>After a week of long brainstorming sessions and a recycle bin full of Red Bull cans, we still hadn\u2019t had the amazing light bulb moment.<\/p>\n<p>Then I read a tweet from Wayne Gretzky:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cA good hockey player plays where the puck is,<br \/>\na great player plays where the puck is going to be\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That was it! The big realization: A quote like that is too good to risk being lost!<\/p>\n<p>Backblaze will no longer back up a customer\u2019s computer; instead we will back up their Twitter account! The idea immediately clicked with the whole team. <a href=\"\/blog\/author\/brianw\/\">Brian Wilson<\/a>, CTO, said \u201cI don\u2019t use Twitter, but if I did, I would totally be bummed if my Tweets were no longer available for posterity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And with a day of engineering work, we introduce our new path: <strong>TwitBlaze<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Tim Nufire, VP of Engineering, had to develop a new, patented, artificial intelligence-based compression algorithm to save on storage space, enabling Tweets to be compressed by 64%:<\/p>\n<p><em>Original:<\/em> &#8220;What is going on in my building? It sounds like a crazy dentist downstairs?&#8221;<br \/>\n<em>Compressed:<\/em> &#8220;Crzy dentst dwnstrs\u2014wtf?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Instead of the last five years of all tweets fitting into one-third of a Backblaze <a href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/cloud-storage\/resources\/storage-pod\">Storage Pod,<\/a> we can now fit all tweets onto a USB stick.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, we had to throttle our large customers who Tweet more than 100 times a month\u2014only their consonants will be backed up. This allows us to keep our costs down for all users by discouraging the messaging hogs.<\/p>\n<p>We are proud to offer five different plans to meet your needs and increase confusion:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ol>1.<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Basic<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ol>for $5\/month: backs up to 200 Tweets<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ol>2.<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Gold<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ol>for $7\/month: backs up to 400 Tweets, vowels are un-throttled<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ol>3.<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Platinum<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ol>for $12\/month: backs up 900 Tweets, and your followers&#8217; tweets<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ol>4.<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Unobtainium<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ol>for $49\/month: backs up 20,000 Tweets, your followers, and Ashton Kutcher\u2019s tweets<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ol>5.<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Adamantium<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ol>for $99\/month: backs up 100,000 Tweets including friends, followers, and celebrities. Restores are free via FedEx to you on a 3.5 inch floppy disk.<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We are looking forward to providing this new service!<br \/>\n(Well, that, and not breaking our backs carrying all those tons of hard drives.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s no secret that providing online backup for all of the data on peoples&#8217; computers takes a lot of hard drives. To be specific, four tons of drives show up every week to our data center to back up our customers&#8217; school papers, birthday videos, and baby photos&#8230; So many baby photos. After a week&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/backing-up-all-data-is-too-hard-backblaze-switches-to-backing-up-twitter\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Backing Up All Data Is Too Hard: Backblaze Switches to Backing Up Twitter<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90626,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[131,10,13],"tags":[375],"class_list":["post-6111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-backblaze-bits","category-backblaze-fun","category-events","tag-april1","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Backing Up All Data Is Too Hard: Backblaze Switches to Backing Up Twitter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It\u2019s no secret that providing online backup for all of the data on peoples&#039; computers takes a lot of hard drives. To be specific, four tons of drives show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/backing-up-all-data-is-too-hard-backblaze-switches-to-backing-up-twitter\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Backing Up All Data Is Too Hard: Backblaze Switches to Backing Up Twitter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It\u2019s no secret that providing online backup for all of the data on peoples&#039; computers takes a lot of hard drives. To be specific, four tons of drives show\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/backing-up-all-data-is-too-hard-backblaze-switches-to-backing-up-twitter\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage &amp; Cloud Backup\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/backblaze\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-04-01T16:42:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-08-13T13:58:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/blog-twitblaze.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"351\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gleb Budman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@backblaze\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@backblaze\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Gleb Budman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Backing Up All Data Is Too Hard: Backblaze Switches to Backing Up Twitter","description":"It\u2019s no secret that providing online backup for all of the data on peoples' computers takes a lot of hard drives. To be specific, four tons of drives show","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/backing-up-all-data-is-too-hard-backblaze-switches-to-backing-up-twitter\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Backing Up All Data Is Too Hard: Backblaze Switches to Backing Up Twitter","og_description":"It\u2019s no secret that providing online backup for all of the data on peoples' computers takes a lot of hard drives. To be specific, four tons of drives show","og_url":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/backing-up-all-data-is-too-hard-backblaze-switches-to-backing-up-twitter\/","og_site_name":"Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage &amp; Cloud Backup","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/backblaze","article_published_time":"2011-04-01T16:42:24+00:00","article_modified_time":"2021-08-13T13:58:45+00:00","og_image":[{"width":560,"height":351,"url":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/blog-twitblaze.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Gleb Budman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@backblaze","twitter_site":"@backblaze","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Gleb Budman","Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/backing-up-all-data-is-too-hard-backblaze-switches-to-backing-up-twitter\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/backing-up-all-data-is-too-hard-backblaze-switches-to-backing-up-twitter\/"},"author":{"name":"Gleb Budman","@id":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/9267dd4f4f7d705914ea0047cc0ff8bf"},"headline":"Backing Up All Data Is Too Hard: Backblaze Switches to Backing Up Twitter","datePublished":"2011-04-01T16:42:24+00:00","dateModified":"2021-08-13T13:58:45+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/backing-up-all-data-is-too-hard-backblaze-switches-to-backing-up-twitter\/"},"wordCount":416,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/backing-up-all-data-is-too-hard-backblaze-switches-to-backing-up-twitter\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/blog-twitblaze.jpg","keywords":["April 1"],"articleSection":["Backblaze Bits","Backblaze Fun","Events"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/backing-up-all-data-is-too-hard-backblaze-switches-to-backing-up-twitter\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/backing-up-all-data-is-too-hard-backblaze-switches-to-backing-up-twitter\/","url":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/backing-up-all-data-is-too-hard-backblaze-switches-to-backing-up-twitter\/","name":"Backing Up All Data Is Too Hard: Backblaze Switches to Backing Up Twitter","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/backing-up-all-data-is-too-hard-backblaze-switches-to-backing-up-twitter\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/backing-up-all-data-is-too-hard-backblaze-switches-to-backing-up-twitter\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/blog-twitblaze.jpg","datePublished":"2011-04-01T16:42:24+00:00","dateModified":"2021-08-13T13:58:45+00:00","description":"It\u2019s no secret that providing online backup for all of the data on peoples' computers takes a lot of hard drives. To be specific, four tons of drives show","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/backing-up-all-data-is-too-hard-backblaze-switches-to-backing-up-twitter\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/backing-up-all-data-is-too-hard-backblaze-switches-to-backing-up-twitter\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/backing-up-all-data-is-too-hard-backblaze-switches-to-backing-up-twitter\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/blog-twitblaze.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/blog-twitblaze.jpg","width":560,"height":351},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/backing-up-all-data-is-too-hard-backblaze-switches-to-backing-up-twitter\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Backing Up All Data Is Too Hard: Backblaze Switches to Backing Up Twitter"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/","name":"Backblaze Cloud Solutions Blog","description":"Cloud Storage &amp; Cloud Backup","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/#organization","name":"Backblaze","url":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/backblaze_icon_transparent.png?fit=512%2C512&ssl=1","contentUrl":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/backblaze_icon_transparent.png?fit=512%2C512&ssl=1","width":512,"height":512,"caption":"Backblaze"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/backblaze","https:\/\/x.com\/backblaze","https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/Backblaze","https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Backblaze"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/9267dd4f4f7d705914ea0047cc0ff8bf","name":"Gleb Budman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/bb-aboutus-Portrait_Gleb_Circle-Beige-e1636498747413-150x150.png","url":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/bb-aboutus-Portrait_Gleb_Circle-Beige-e1636498747413-150x150.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/bb-aboutus-Portrait_Gleb_Circle-Beige-e1636498747413-150x150.png","caption":"Gleb Budman"},"description":"Gleb Budman is a co-founder and has served as our chief executive officer since 2007, guiding the business from its inception in a Palo Alto apartment to a company serving customers in more than 175 countries with over an exabyte of data under management. Gleb has served as a member of our board of directors since 2009 and as chairperson since January 2021. Prior to Backblaze, Gleb was the senior director of product management at SonicWall and the vice president of products at MailFrontier, which was acquired by SonicWall. Before that, he served in a senior position at Kendara, which was acquired by Excite@Home, and previously founded and successfully exited two other startup companies.","url":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/author\/gleb\/"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/blog-twitblaze.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}