Yiying Lu’s most famous illustration thus far is linked with failure - and that has turned out to be a good thing.

The young artist is the bubbly brainchild behind Twitter’s "fail whale," the image that appears when Twitter is overloaded and can’t function. In the picture, a flock of birds carry an enormous, smiling whale over the water.

Through Twitter, the whale has become a sign of the times. This year, the popular San Francisco microblogging service sent an astonishing 25 billion messages of 140 characters or fewer and added 100 million new users.

Though the fail whale doesn’t appear as frequently as it once did on Twitter, it lives on. It has inspired a fan club, two parties and at least one tattoo. Last month, for the premiere of his new show,�Conan O’Brien commissioned Lu to create the "pale whale," which depicts the comedian riding on top of a whale as it is being carried by birds.

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