Those of you that tweet are all too familiar with the Twitter Fail Whale. Twitter goes down almost as frequently as people tweet. Sometimes it’s because people are tweeting about the World Cup, other times it’s just because Twitter can’t seem to handle the monster it has created.

A few hours ago in an attempt to tweet something random whilst waiting for the train, I came across our old friend the fail whale. Around the same time, Mashable reported that Twitter was down. Again. I got to thinking about those 600 tweets per second that were now silenced and what in the name-of-all-that’s-holy were people doing to fill the void?

Stemming from the age old question, what did we do before <insert technology/gadget here>? Where did all those random thoughts go before Twitter was joyfully introduced into our lives? Did they stay in your brain, stacking one on top of the other waiting for your brain to burst? Did we text people? Did we call our BFF to tell them that you just had pizza for lunch? Not quite, at least in my case.

Given an opportunity to share the most intimate details of our lives, we’ll do it. But if there was no outlet, all those little overshares and tidbits about our day are left unsaid. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. This is also why we have to choice to follow who we want and unfollow without hurting people’s feelings.

People, in general, will always talk about themselves and thankfully we have a place to do so where celebs, government officials and Joe Smith down the street are all on an equal playing field and can say what they want and when (within reason, of course). So thanks Twitter, for giving us that opportunity.

As I write this, Twitter is back up and the tweets are flying once again. As you were, Twitter soldiers…power on.