2 The Best of Bot Worlds

Every hour, on the hour, the tower of the Palace of Westminster in London explodes with the sounds of bells ringing as Big Ben strikes out the time in a series of resounding bongs. At the same time, humming away on a server without quite as much applause, a script sends a tweet to @big_ben_clock's Twitter feed, with the word BONG typed out one or more times to signify the hour. More than 490,000 people follow the unofficial Big Ben Twitterbot, which has been tweeting the hour since 2009. It even updates its profile picture with images of fireworks every New Year's Eve and little fluttering hearts on Valentine's Day. Moreover, it continued to tweet on the hour even as the real thing went silent in August 2017 for a projected four-year period of rest and restoration.