Twitter seen holding up under barrage of Apple iPad tweets

Computerworld - Twitter appears to have mostly held up under a barrage of tweets during Apple's announcement of the iPad today.

Early this afternoon, Apple CEO Steve Jobs ended months of rumor and online speculation about the product the company has dubbed the iPad.

The unveiling of the new device, which looks like a big iPhone, sent the Twitterverse into overdrive.

At one point, four of the top 10 search strings on Twitter were related to the iPad.

"So the apple iPad looks awesome!!!," wrote one Twitterer. Another tweeted, "Love Love Love Steve Jobs and the new Apple iPad! Innovation at its best resides at Mac!!!!"

But Twitter users aren't shy when it comes to tweeting about what they don't like, either.

"Overall... iPad a big disappointment," tweeted one user. Many were afire with dislike for the name iPad. "The best part about the iPad announcement is all the jokes fillin up my tweet stream. keep em coming!," noted one Twitterer.

There had been some online speculation this morning that Twitter Inc.'s infrastructure might not be able to handle the activity expected during and after the iPad announcement. But Twitter didn't crash, and the stream of tweets kept flowing despite some intermittent slowdowns.

Twitter did note on its status page this morning that it was dealing with delays, but it later noted that all was clear by 3:30 p.m.

AlertSite, a Web site performance monitor, reported at around 1 p.m. Eastern time that Twitter response time had slowed to about 70 seconds in some locations. At the same time, some Twitter users complained of delays up to eight or 10 minutes.

Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin, send e-mail to sgaudin@computerworld.com or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed .

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