Does it strike anyone as terribly ironic that on the day that Twitter officially raises $15-million in venture capital, the service continues to be plagued by technical problems?

Forget about Twitter surviving the Steve Jobs’ most recent love-fest, it would have been better if Twitter had been able to stay up today as a sign of faith for its investors – Union Square Ventures and Digital Garage, Jeff Bezos and Bijan Sabet.

Speaking of irony, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said the money will be used to make Twitter “reliable and robust”. Maybe that’s something Twitter should have been working on before pulling in a cool $15-million.

“To reach our goal, Twitter must be reliable and robust. Private funding gives us the runway we need to stay focused on the infrastructure that will help our business take flight. We will continue hiring systems engineers, operators, and architects, as well as consultants, scientists, and other professionals to help us realize our vision.”

As for a business model, Stone says it’s coming…soon. Well, as soon as Twitter gets its act together (aka stops going down on a regular basis).

Meanwhile, Twitter becomes more popular as the growing number of disciples embrace micro-blogging and the ability to communicate at any time in mere seconds.

As for alternatives, Pownce is still around. In fact, MIT’s Technology Review goes out on a limb and names Pownce as one of the 10 Web startups to watch in 2008.

MIT suggests that while you can micro-blog with Pownce, “it really a file-sharing platform disguised as a micro­blogging service–and possibly the next big thing to inflict insomnia on entertainment industry lawyers.”

Hmm, that’s interesting – a P2P platform – just the thing that Canadians are going to need to circumvent the disastrous copyright legislation recently tabled.

Finally, Mashable has all kinds of good things to say about Twellow, which makes it easier to find fellow Twitter users. It’s a really cool application. Mashable suggests this is something Twitter should have built. I suggest it’s something they should buy, along with a few servers and some loading balance thing-a-ma-jigs.

More: I’m Actually Not a Geek has some straightforward insight into the investment and what Bezos brings to the table.

Technorati Tags: Pownce, Twitter

I’ve been thinking a lot about Fred Wilson’s post a few days ago on his search for inspiration and the challenges he sometimes faces coming up with ideas for blog posts.

What was particularly interesting was Fred’s regular sources for inspiration are delicious/popular, digg, techmeme, hacker news and reddit.

The common thread is they’re all online resources. As much as there’s a tremendous amount of information on the Web, I think one of the major flaws among the digerati is they spend too much time online – be it reading, communicating, entertainment, etc.

The need to be in touch, connected, networked, online and aware of every conversation can be all-consuming. The digerati spend so much time engaged that they forget there’s a whole other world featuring all kinds of inspiration in all kinds of places.

It got me thinking that people who spend a lot of time online really need to step away from the keyboard…and breathe and think.

They need to stop looking for the next comment or conversation or blog post or intriguing start-up. It’s when you’re focused on whether to have a Chardonnay or a Pinot Grigio, or whether to take a bike ride or go for run, or whether to watch the Spain-Italy quarter-final or the Blue Jays-Pirates game that you really allow yourself to healthily disengage from the Web.

Then, your mind can start to wander and wonder about this and that. It’s then that ideas about blog posts, new adventures, desires, wants and needs start to bubble up to the surface.

If you call pull yourself away from the keyboard (and that includes your iPhone and Blackberry) for a healthy period of time, you will be pleasantly surprised about how much inspiration you’ll get from the world around you.

Coffee and conversations with friends and family can get you thinking about things in completely different ways; newspaper articles can prompt you to scribble down thoughts so you won’t lose them; and walking down the street to do an errand can get you to look at things in a new light.

Come on, give it a whirl. It’ll be good for you.

Next: Why reply right away when you can breathe, think and then click send.

More: Here’s an interesting story looking at how some employees are beginning to fight back against employers who give them Blackberries AND expect them to be available 24/7.

Of all the executives jumping off the good ship Yahoo, del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter’s departure should be among the least surprising.

When Yahoo acquired del.icio.us in 2005, del.icio.us was red-hot. It was the bookmarking service on the Web – popular, valuable, useful and cool. Then, Yahoo came along – a move that Schachter believed would bring “new features and more servers in the future”.

Sadly, del.icio.us went from the belle of the ball to the girl who stands in the corner waiting for something to ask her to dance.

Rather than encourage/allow del.icio.us to innovate, Yahoo ignored it or discouraged it from moving forward. The silver lining is by doing nothing with del.icio.us, Yahoo didn’t destroy it.

In the 2+ years that Yahoo has owned del.icio.us, the amount of innovation and new features introduced as been, at best, minimal. Sure, there have been some rumblings about a super-duper beta being developed but after months of waiting, nothing has happened.

Like many of Yahoo’s acquisitions, del.icio.us has wilted on the vine. Sure, it’s still popular but it could have been and should be so much more. It’s my belief, for example, that del.icio.us could easily become a vibrant search engine given there’s so much data that has been selected and tagged.

In a comment left on TechCrunch, Schachter leaves no doubt he was disappointed by Yahoo’s treatment of del.icio.us:

“I was largely sidelined by the decisions of my management. So that was mostly the result rather than the cause, if that makes sense. It was an incredibly frustrating experience and I wish I was a lot more like Stewart [Butterfield] in terms of pushing my point of view.”

Technorati Tags: del.icio.us, Joshua Schachter, Yahoo