Twitter IM down May 23rd-May24th

I imagine that when your as big as twitter your always going to get attention from "undesireables" - people that want to find weakness and effect the "status quo" of a service. I had the same thing with online gameservers when i used to run a GSP. There are more people wanting to break something than empower it. Happens for a number of reasons, lack of education, the belief that you get respect from it. The fact that creating a hack, or a ddos of some level makes you get some kind of empowerment from it.

Plus, i always say to people - what you worried about, so you cannot get on twitter, yes it is annoying but when did FREE = QUALITY anyway? - if this was a paid for service i of course would expect some kind of SLA but it currently is not so i can live without it. I tend to get more work done when twitter is down so it is win win for me.

Respect for keeping it going. I personally think you need to look at a p2p windows/mac/linux tray application that spreads the load in some way. Surely distributed would be the best way forward to take that load away from the core areas?

It does prove the power of being first thou into this arena, that users will stay regardless of the downtime because the community and friends are there and they do not want to miss out on anything. I personally, will never leave twitter. When a website can cross over and become something so ingrained into your day to day - you know you have more than a product..

Is it fixed yet? I'm still not getting Twitter on GTalk

guess not. i dont use the gtalk stuff. imagine that is where the "vunerable" attack vector is that causes the main core to throw a paddy. :)

Just waiting (half) patiently.

I'm so mad that Twitter has decided not to move forward with IM service. I use GTalk like 80% of the time as I'm always on the go. Twitter was fun that way, not just sitting in front of a PC tied to a keyboard.

It's now the 27th May, how about an update? Linking to an old blog post isn't much help. And it's clearly not the IM service alone that's responsible for this. If it were, you wouldn't have to disable pagination.

The blog post mentions that you might be ok saturday. It's now tuesday.

still no update? twittersync for facebook is not syncing at all

Fwiw, saw this tweet from @stevej half an hour ago:

stevej: working on jabber, friends. working furiously.

The main way I Twitter through, that's Google Talk Desktop Client will no longer work. My facebook twitter application doesn't work anymore either. This is after using GTalk for about 2 months, now it just stopped working. I understand that Twitter is having growing pains, and connectivity can be intermittent, but to be completely down for so long, leaves me looking for something else.
Twitter, you had me, then ya lost me.

The problem is that they wrote on the blog and here that it would be online at the "last" weekend and it's not. And there is no new note from twitter folks how it will go forward. There is still nothing, no comment :-(

And the support "never" answers to questions! :-((

Mathias

Unfortunately, it looks like this is going to be down for the night. We're bringing services back up slowly, and want to make sure we're doing the right thing every step along the way.

Thanks for your continued patience!

Hmmm... this probably explains why, as a new user, I couldn't figure out how to get Google Talk to work with Twitter... I didn't clue in as to why it wasn't working, as while exploring twitter, the system told me how to hook up to Google Talk, and even gave me a verification password to send, if only I could figure out how to send a message to twitter, which mysteriously didn't have a chat option...

Perhaps the downtime could be clarified for us newbies needing a cluebat... or at least on one of the more obviously affected pages.

Truth be told, I figured the IM'ing meant chatting on the twitter website itself, not integration with IM clients (I know, duh)

Is it just me or does it seem like Twitter IM is back up?

yeap looks like twitter im is working atm

Thanks for the update Jason -- I've been unable to perform the setup, but I'll try it again tomorrow =(

Yes, IM is offline once again.

For what it's worth, IM message delivery seemed fine initially but started slowing down just before it was taken offline.

By 'slowing down' I mean that I usually see messages in IM before I get them via sms (I have one account on im, and another account on sms, so for a few people I get their tweets on both devices). During the latter part of today's IM test period, there were sms messages arriving several minutes ahead of IM.

Yeah I haven't seen twitter on my buddy list in at least a week....

When IM is down I don't use Twitter. It's been long enough now I might just go find something else that actually works. Twitter had great potential, but it's ALWAYS broken.

An update for Thursday was posted on the Twitter Status Blog around six hours ago at http://status.twitter.com.

For convenience, here's the entire entry:

Wanted to provide an update on where we are in restoring services. The partial pagination fix we deployed appears stable. Some folks are still going to be missing Older links but we’re working to restore those.

IM remains offline today but we completed the testing of an important technology fix. Getting IM back for all users remains the top service we need to restore; we’re working on it.

The API limit is still being kept at 30 requests per hour to help us stabilize the service for everyone. Some folks will get “rate limit exceeded” error if you use API clients that request data from us at a higher rate. Please reconfigure them appropriately for the time being.

Guys, I wish you good luck in fixing this problem! We all like Twitter very much and are missing it.

I was thinking that I was just being an idiot cuz I couldn't add a buddy properly and the fix suggested on the other problem seemed to only be relevant to Google Apps for Domains users. I'm thankful that it's not just me but sad that I can't twitter yet.

still waiting on this resolution, hope you guys can sort it out soon!

More Q&A at the Twitter blog.

Also, just saw a link to this video interview on Robert Scoble's blog re: Twitter downtime and scalability (rough transcript available at Scoble's blog).



Edited to add:
Whoa! The video embed worked! That's so cool.

If all goes according to plan, we might get IM back on Tuesday, according to this new update posted 10 hours ago on the Twitter Status blog:

We’re gathering today to make some minor changes on our slave databases (shortening a few tables) to help speed queries. You may notice some extra slowness while we bring the modifications into production. We’ll get speedy again after the databases warm to the new queries.

This is an effort to reduce overall web and API load time and clear the area so we can bring IM services online (we’re shooting for Tuesday).

It'd be nice to see a write up of the technical solution to this. Reading about how a site like twitter handles scalability would be interesting... :)

So - I take this is IM issue is not fixed, right? I love using Twitter non Google Chat (in my Gmail and in iChat) and it sucks that it's not updating.

Twitter status blogpost from six hours ago:

With the exception of some spiky load this morning, today has been largely stable. We believe the changes we made over the weekend have had a postive effect on the overall stability of the service.

Next up: the restoration of IM - this is still our top priority to fix.

Com'on, guys!! We need that IM Jabber bot! :D

any updates on this?

No Google Talk IM for 2 weeks now. I've weened myself off of using Twitter now, maybe I'll start using Plurk now.

This has borked TwitterSync on Facebook, too. They thought it would be restored June 3. What gives?

Yep, it was the TwitterSync issue that brought all this mayhem to my attention.
I thought IM was top priority three days ago (before they killed a database, I guess)...

I only Twitter through GTalk, and Twitter hasn't been online at all in two weeks. Intermittent access I can deal with, but not this.

I just signed up for twitter in the last week or so, because Leo Laporte is ALWAYS talking about it. The IM function, which is what I need to use, has not been working since I started.
This is very disappointing

Please add a notice about this on the "verify devices" page... I wasted a lot of time going through the "google talk for my domain" settings to get this to work, just for it to not be online...

it's strange, plurk is also having IM interactivity hiccups, but yeah this is painful on twitter, weeks of downtime.

wonder how many twitters won't come back after this extended outage? Very bad for the rep.

come on guys, 3 and a half weeks later and still no love? What about the promises of a return a week or so ago?

Goodbye Twitter.. there's only so long we can wait before we give up and go to a service that actually works. Closing my account today :(

It's not only that the IM is down, it's that the twitter folks don't seem to care. Why have they not changed their device setup page to reflect that fact that IM is down? Why is there no "status" board to show that it is down? Why can't they mention that IM is down on the homepage?

Yeah. They wrote all about how they were taking some service offline for the WWDC keynote speech, and wrote about how it all went off without a hitch and the services were back. But what about IM?

Looks like they're in the process of testing and debugging their IM fix.

I say that because Twitter IM came back on for me around 3 or 4 hours earlier. I've so far received well over a hundred tweets via im, but it looks like I still can't send my own tweets through im. Also, the IM bot is still listed as being 'offline' so people who are trying to verify their im still won't be able to.

I'm guessing, based on this tweet from @stevej from five hours ago, that they turned IM on to collect logs for troubleshooting.

Also, it looks like they've been adding hardware capacity to their im server as well

So fwiw, while it may sometimes feel like they're not doing anything or that they don't care about the situation, there are indications that they're hard at work on it.

Woohoo! They've given us a status update. "IM: remains offline; bringing this core service back remains our highest priority"

http://status.twitter.com/

Trying not to be overly critical, but it's a little hard to believe it "remains [their] highest priority" when we can clearly see from the status page that so many other things have been worked on/tested/resolved since they last declared it their "highest priority" about two weeks ago...

When they first took IM offline, I was under the impression that they'd be fixing or optimizing whatever setup they had and that it'll be back in a day or two.

But now that it's taken more than a couple of weeks, I'm starting to think that they're writing a completely new version of Twitter IM from scratch, possibly using different technology.

The status blog hints at this here: "IM continues to be down but we’ve made progress on that front; we’ve tested a lot more of the technology we need in order to restore this service." (emphasis mine)

And also another hint here: "IM is still offline as we work to bring it back in a more stable form." (emphasis mine)

And the Twitter developer blog comes right out and says: "Our direction going forward is to replace our existing system, component-by-component, with parts that are designed from the ground up to meet the requirements that have emerged as Twitter has grown." (emphasis mine again)

So my guess -- which at this point is pure speculation, of course -- is that IM is the "highest priority" in the sense that it's the first component that will be completely re-written and replaced by something new... and this is why it's taking so much longer than we would all like.

Ok, I hope you understand, but I can't be checking these forums and status.twitter every day to find out what the latest situation is. So for now I'm going to look around for alternatives and it's goodbye Twitter.
I like to think you'll drop all your users an email or something when you're fully functional again...

@armcurl Slightly confused.... Why don't you try one of the many splendid AIR applications instead, like Thwirl? Also you don't need to keep checking the status every day... Just follow this thread!

While I miss my TwitterIM (though I am getting work done for a change) Its not going to make me change from Twitter. Frankly the other twitter-esk applications, who shall remain nameless, aren't nearly as usable as twitter.

Personally I miss the tracking functionality more.

@armcurl why in god's name would you switch to another service? barak obama uses twitter, you think there's a better system? And what is so hard about reading emails to check that status?

@Nathan: my sincere apologies for having a life beyond Twitter and email. Right now, as far as I'm concerned it really is more trouble than it's worth; I've lived without it in the past and I'm pretty certain I can live without it in the future. It's a nice toy, but it's really not that important in the big picture of my life...
The fact that an American political candidate uses it, doesn't affect my choices in the slightest. I'll stick to keeping up to date with my mates over a cold one, does Barak do that ?

please guys... do something

I don't know about anybody else, but i've been getting updates through Gtalk, though i can't update my status through it, and the bot appears to be offline. Anybody else with this experience?

Girls! Could we stop pulling braids and keep this thread on topic?

We've gotten some good status reports in the last few days to tell us that:
a) they are working on it, and it actually is a high priority
b) they are testing a new system that's more robust
c) the new implementation is a bigger project and taking a long time as a result.

Soooo ... Twitter IM has been down for 4 months, and "we're working on it" has been the only real status update the whole time?

I guess you meant weeks and not months? 8-)

The Twitter IM bot appears to be offline so folks who are trying to verify their IM aren't able to do so.

But it's been partially back online since last week. So people who already had IM verified before May 23 are currently able to receive messages from Twitter, but not able to send.

The last time I was able to update via AIM was in January; it stopped working sometime between then and the time I tried in February. Using the web interface (include twhirl) works fine.

It's been a long time; twhirl is almost as good as IM, but... IM would be better.

Oh, yes. @jack said (in another thread) that they removed the AIM option. This was late Feb 2008. At the time, it seemed they had plans to bring it back, but this hasn't happened yet.

Great. So something that used to work is being replaced by something that doesn't work. (Gmail's Jabber doesn't seem to work all that well with Adium half the time.)

Alright, this is starting to get ridiculous. Normally I understand when things take a long time. But the whole reason I started using Twitter was because of the way it integrated with some other web apps that I use. Which means I'll have no problem if I have to leave it completely. I've gotten so used to not having IM (my preferred method by miles) that I won't miss it at all.

Plus, I just can't use something where there are no visible sings of anything being fixed when something goes wrong. I know it's a free service, which means I won't lose any money if I stop using it.

I think twitter have take a marketing 101 class. this is really ridiculous. You just cannot take that long to solve a problem like this.

Agree with the last two commenters. This is getting absolutely ridiculous. It's great to be working on an overhauled system, but why can't you leave the old one operational while you work on the new one? Sure, that's probably naive, but there must be SOMETHING you can do! I'm rapidly losing my Twitter addiction — IM is what fueled it for me.

You patently didn't really use the IM system. It was broken. It would randomly disconnect your account from the system. Messages would sometime send, but not always and I imagine that the volume of traffic being handled by the Jabber server(s) was immense.

There are in the region of 1 942 270 Twitter accounts (http://www.twitdir.com/) with thousands of new accounts daily (according to stats I just read) if only 25% (made up figure) of those users are online at any one time that's 486000 users. If 15% of those users are using IM as their method of sending and receiving, that 73000 people for whom Twitter needs to process messages for every time a message sent from every single client, be that an Adobe AIR client, web applications and blog panels, SMS, the twitter site itself or any of the other many clients that are attached to Twitter via its API.

That's an immense amount of processing - you might think its easy to do, because twitter made it so seamless and easy for you to use - but at the rate that twitter is growing the old IM system was getting more and more flaky. There is no way it could cope with the usage now.

Building a new system from scratch is not a 2 day job, unless you know exactly what you want and throw two lots of infinite monkeys at it! Building a robust, scalable system will take time and they are working on it as fast as possible (as can be seen from other posts/comments/blogs/tweets).

Try one of the other clients or apps instead : http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Apps
I particularly like Thwirl at the minute

Also take a look at http://twitterfacts.blogspot.com/ for some facts and figures on twitter usage, so you get an idea of the enormity of the task being undertaken by twitter's dev team!

Whether I know the technical end of what's going on is hardly relevant. And I know for some people using IM isn't important. But it is for me. So in my situation, here are the important facts:

1 - Twitter doesn't have IM going and there is not even a rough guess as to when it will be back.
2 - Twitter use to have IM, but it died on May 23 with a note saying that it should be back shortly.
3 - Twitter never told us they are building something new. Unless I missed their announcement, it took a regular user such as myself guessing and the company confirming this fact. And I really hope I just missed Twitter's announcement on this one.

If Twitter hadn't had IM at all, I wouldn't be using it.

If Twitter had said from the start, or very close to May 24 (ie no more than 3 or 4 business days later at the very latest) what was going on then at least we would have known for longer. As it stands, the oldest announcement I've seen is 7 days ago.

I'll still be checking, because I really want to use Twitter. But I didn't sign up for it because I wanted to post status updates or anything. I signed up because of how it integrated with other programs that I use with Twitter IM.

I agree, it would have been nice to see more updates on it rather than simply "offline". I always like it when companies are straight up about whats going on. It would be cool if Twitter could give us regular detailed updates on the status of reworking IM, just so we can see light at the end of tunnel instead of blindly wondering.

i'm surprised they haven't removed the IM options on the user interface - or at least added a note that they won't work. leaving them there as-is implies that IM still works and fuels the confusion/annoyance of new users or those who haven't been following the updates on the blog.

Agree with the last three comments - there is no excuse for the level of service that twitter clients are getting. There are a lot of things that they should have done to minimize all the frustration generated. Clients don ́t want to know the technical side involved in providing the IM app. They want to use a service that works as it suppose to work.

This is not the way to treat clients....

Agree it would be nice if there's a note at the http://twitter.com/devices page regarding IM being offline.

To be fair though, people who already have IM verified have a note on their sidebar that says IM is offline (I see it on my sidebar). They apparently don't display the same sidebar note for people who don't have IM verified (I guess the idea was that it's not relevant to them so why display it).

Special request to Twitter. Please don't scorn me everyone, but I did something stupid when the bot started sending messages again. Impulsively, I tried deactivating and reactivating my IM service, to see if that would let it accept messages. Of course, it didn't take my confirmation code, as I should have foreseen. I didn't write anything here because I assumed IM service was on the verge of return, but now since it seems once again to be down indefinitely, I was wondering if the Twitter folks could manually reconfirm my Twitter IM link? It would make me *really* appreciative.

It would be absolutely necessary to add a note on http://twitter.com/devices page. I just registered on twitter and wanted to try the IM interface. I lost half an hour of my life trying different IM clients on Linux and Windows for nothing before I found this discussion. Twitter could have been saving me from this annoyance with 21 chars on the devices page: "IM currently not working".

Twitter guys, I'm not blaming you that IM isn't working but I'm blaming you for not informing new users at the appropriate location.

agree, considering twitter staff supposedly monitors this discussion, would think that would be a simple implementation

Everybody should be watching http://status.twitter.com/ now, which does clearly say that IM is not working. Twitter has been updating that page daily, if not more often.

The problem is (as schallstrom stated), most new users don't know about status.twitter.com, and assume when the devices page says you can use IM to tweet, they just assume it works.

I know I fell in the same trap very easily (see my previous post.)

Congratulations. It's been a month now since Twitter originally said that IM would be back.

What a milestone...

I just started twittering. What frustrates me is that there is NO NOTICE on the IM setup page that it is not working properly right now. I just spent half an hour trying over and over, searching help, searching google, and trying to auth thru gmail directly, just to find that it's been down for a month.

Thanks for this free service, but screw you for misleading me into wasting my time. Take care of your people and they'll take care of you.

JUST GIVE US A LITTLE NOTE BEFORE WE TRY TO USE IT.

Mr. Gunn, does that mean that IM is working for you?

I, too, lost a ton of time yesterday, trying to get IM working with Twitter. A simple "IM is currently unavalable" message on the Devices page would have been greatly appreciated. Finding the Status page was a complete accident, making it pretty useless.

wasted so much time trying to get this to work. PUT A NOTE UP ON THE SITE TO SAY ITS DOWN

Given the sheer scale of the length of outtage that Twitter is having for everything but SMS and custom plug-ins/aps to talk to it, maybe it'd be for the best if they just cut that line of work off entirely now and focussed on other aspects of the system. (Hades below knows we can just use FriendFeed and the like to monitor and reply and in many ways that's a BETTER interface than the original one.)

Honestly, it would take about five seconds to add a notice to the devices page that IM is down indefinitely. There's no excuse for leaving it open to confused new users.

The idea that they haven't touched or fixed this -- let alone put anything up on the webpage or devices page -- reaffirms the fact that is crappy service and Twitter folk don't give two tugs. Gtalk is the ONLY way I could access twitter at work, and now I am out of the loop. Thanks for nothing, Twitterfolk.

I hope Penny Arcade pans you in another comic involving Gabe and his restroom habits.

Cincinnati Bell blocks Twitter via phone (and a LOT of people in Cincinnati have mobile phone service through them) so the way I update is via IM. I kept thinking something was wrong with my settings, didn't realize this has been down for so long. It takes about 10 seconds to post something on your site saying this service is no longer available or isn't working.

That's the problem though yvetteu, telling people would be admitting that something was wrong.

At this point, I'm convinced that Twitter is trying to pretend that IM never existed.

Except that they *still* advertise it on the front page for new users, and users who never set it up. No, I think this is just blatant laziness/incompetence/disregard.

twitter is saying: bye-bye customers..........and I say: bye-bye twitter....

Seriously, if something doesn't work then you should let everyone know. Current users need to be told so they don't think something is wrong on their end. New users need to be told for the same reason, and because I know some people signed up because of IM support.

There is no reason why we should be into July and no solution to the problem is in place.

So Twitter, what is going on?

Why is it taking this long to get IM back up to working?

Why haven't the users been told for the past 40 days or so what the real status of IM is? And no, status updates int he status blog saying that it's being worked on don't count.

I mean no offense in this next request, so for those effected please don't take any. But...

I want to hear this in video form from the heads, and not some employee responding to this thread. Not only do I think the heads of Twitter will have better information, I think they need to prove that they stand behind their product. Because as of now, the customer service has gone to Hell with this whole issue.

What's our alternative then? Friendfeed? Pownce? Plurk?

In my mind, there's a big difference between "It'll be back Thursday" and "We'll try our best to have it up in the next few days/weeks/before the end of the month."

Honestly, we've heard that it's being worked on. So what exactly is making this take so long? Is there a soft deadline y'all have set for yourself to get it back up? And if so, when is it?

At this point, being completely transparent is about the only way to save face. We've heard the "It's coming back" speech before. And at least with me, it no longer holds a grain of truth until I can see some sort of action to back it up.

All of us should post links to this thread on our Twitter accounts.

Is it sad when that's the best thing I've heard in this thread for a long time?

A notice is going to be put up on the devices page today, according to @jack. Here's what I @'d to him:

"@jack: Is Twitter going to put a notice on the devices page saying IM is down so that newbies don't spend hours trying to figure it out?" (tweet link)

And he replied:

"@chris24 Yes. Today." (tweet link)

That would have been a lot more helpful a month ago when it went down in the first place.

I appreciate Jason's response as an employee, but frankly twitter as a business, not an employee, needs to respond. I'm still using it, but I've advised colleagues to look elsewhere due to this situation. Capabilitiy problems, databases down, website overload, it's all quite amateur -- especially as these events keep repeating themselves over and over. Really, change the stupid webpage, tell people it isn't working, and quit promising that you're going to fix it. I'm giving it another week, then I'm looking elsewhere.

Looks like the http://twitter.com/devices page has been updated and what you see depends on your IM status.

1. If you already have IM added and verified, it will show you your current IM settings and allow you to change notifications to OFF and allow you to delete.

2. If you haven't tried adding IM before, you won't even see an option to add it. You'll only see an option to add or change your phone device settings.

3. If you have already added IM but it's still not verified, you will still see your unverified IM settings and the verification code that needs to be sent. If you hit 'delete and start over,' you'll get a screen similar to #2 above.

Hi mdy. I don't think no. 3 is quite accurate. I added IM some time ago but never got verification. Now all I see are options to edit my Mobile Phone settings just like no. 2. Pending verification gone, option to add/edit/delete IM gone.

Thanks, santiago! I had an account where the IM was not yet verified and it showed me #3. Since then, I have clicked the 'delete and start over' button (which is how I know it reverts to #2 after you delete) so I can't see what it would have displayed now.

I actually prefer it to be the way you now describe it. Since it's currently not possible to verify IM, it's better to just not display IM device settings at all if it's not yet verified. Otherwise, people who have added IM but haven't yet verified it may get the impression that it's possible to verify.

I'm getting most (not all) IM updates from twitterers I follow, but I can't reply or twitter through IM. This can be frustrating, as when I get a DM from somebody but can't reply until I'm not at work anymore, when I can access the website. Blech. I'm hanging on, but I *really* want this to work again.

Another night of downtime...another guess that the code is still being re-written. Better odds of success if you start outsourcing your coding work to a larger group of contractors in some other nation.

But I'll hold out hope for another week.

Ohh - i was so excited and signed up thinking I could update at work through IM as I can't get on the web at the office (ACCESS DENIED!!!)...so this could be my one link to the outside normal non-office non-artificial lighting world. It really would have been nice instead of enticing me in with twitters secret seductive whispers of "update by IM and waste hours away instead of earning your mortgage payment in earnest" it said "coming soon! the ability to update by IM"...I do appreciate that I stumbled onto this and found the posting saying they are working on it & though from an impatient and "we put an effing man on the moon, just fix it" stand point, i'd like it NOW - i do realize programming is difficult and you want to QA it or else all of us will be posted how broke a** and sucky it is :) Please just fix it quickly. give the programmers coffee and twinkies and tell them i have work to avoid. thank you kindly for your hard work and your urgency.

Andy - I'm not sure I'm even smart enough to read your message much less know how to do it - but it is worth a shot. Just the word ping scares me. just so you know - i'm going to type "ping.fm" right up there into where i normally type in "google.com" and if that does nothing - i'm going to sit back whilst you techies all mock me via your iphones. b*stards ;) (she said charmingly)

andy - the site worked - but the beta code didnt :( guess i'll just have to wait!

amy (and others) - current ping.fm beta code: dreamofping

I have read a lot of posts/comments about this issue. As a new user and many others are new as well.

Sure they have updated/changed the /devices page, but it doesn't say at the top "IM services down" or something, because when you click on the FAQ/Help to setup IM there are instructions on how to do this but it doesn't say that the IM service is down nor does it say on the front page of my updates.

I see the last time any update was made was nearly 2 weeks ago and it has been down over a month now? Twitter is ok... its not the best of the best I've seen even for free but I can't complain its free.

At this point, I'd be tempted to pay for some twitter service that included IM.

can't seem to get this page to log me in so I can add it to my twitter?

Can someone else develop an Instant Messenger app using the Twitter API? I have to imagine there is one or two competent programmers following this.

We could do with some more communication I think. Even if it was just more info on status.twitter.com which is very vocal on why there is a bit of congestion on the site which is only a minimal problem really, and very quiet on the total absence of IM which is MUCH more important to most people.