When Twitter experiences an outage, users will see the “fail whale” error message created by Australian artist and designer Yiying Lu. It’s a whimsical illustration of red birds using nets to hoist a whale from the ocean. The message reads: “Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again.”
She didn’t expect that her work would become a ‘hit’ after uploading her illustration to iStockphoto in July 2007 until Biz Stone, one of the founders of Twitter happened to stumble across her image a year later. During that time, Twitter was experiencing regular service outrages and this had spurred Stone on to find a suitable and cute downtime image. He purchased the iStockPhoto’s standard license, which grants a perpetual worldwide right for such online uses.
Gradually, the the Fail Whale image started to gain popularity on the micro-blogging platform. However, the designer herself wasn’t widely known. This is when Tom Limongello, a Twitter enthusiast decided to make her popular. After asking Yiying Lu to set up a Fail Whale online store on Zazzle so that everyone on Twitter can enjoy her work, she managed to gain fame on the micro-blogging platform. This was how Fail Whale was born…
Anyway, I’ve compiled a list of “50+ Really Cool Twitter ‘Fail Whale’ Images/Graphics” for you guys to enjoy!
