It seems that Twitter’s growth rate is positively correlated with Twitter’s downtime. As the site continues to gather users, I am left staring at a “connection timed out” page more and more often. This leads me to ask myself, “What is a Twitter addict to do during the constant Twitter downtime?”

Pownce - Usually, my first instinct is to head to Pownce.com and try to rekindle the feeling of connectedness that Twitter provides. However, even Kevin Rose admits that that is not what Pownce was designed for. I don’t have near as many friends on Pownce as I do on Twitter anyway. At least I can get exposed to some new media files…

Facebook - I know I could always go to Facebook to look at all my friends’ status updates, but it just isn’t “realtime” enough for me. Joe added a few more pictures to his profile, and Jennifer sent me another application invite, but I want to know what my friends are doing NOW.

Catch up on RSS Feeds - It’s funny how impatient I’ve become since I started using Twitter. If I can’t read an entire item in 140 characters then I simply don’t have the time. Plus, all the important news is announced on Twitter anyway.

Write a blog post - Hey, there’s an idea. But what will I write about? Man, I wish Twitter was back up…

Go Outside - I know this one seems a little drastic, but when I can’t keep in touch with my followers, I feel very cutoff from society. It’s good to go out and make sure that the world is still moving at times like these. If you think Twitter downtime is bad, imagine if reality had the same connection problems…