What was that about how people are emotional about the social software they use? Today was a pretty rough day, with a long painful downtime for TypePad, and I spent all day talking to people and the press about it. Until this afternoon, the only bright light was that no data has been lost and the service is back up and running.
But then the best part of the day: Steve Rubel's post.
Six Apart will get it right. As one of TypePad's most popular bloggers, I proudly remain loyal to their service. I know that history repeats itself all the time and that they will thrive. Now back to our regular scheduled blogging.
It's an incredibly thoughtful post, and the kind of supportive voice that I've come to realize is common, if not necessarily loudest, in the blogosphere.
Thanks, Steve for helping turn a terrible day around and for trusting me and all of us on the team at Six Apart to get things right in the long run. It's that sense that makes a lot of our work with bloggers feel like I'm working with family and friends. This was reinforced when I saw Brent's post as well.
Which, by the way, is what I meant with my inscrutable quote in this Forbes story. I'm quoted as not being worried about angry users, but what I meant is that people only get angry with those they value or care about, and it's flattering that TypePad users care that much about the service and their blogs.
The joke about the holiday season is just me trying to have some fun on a really shitty day for our customers. It's funny because it's true!
Not that this will make you feel any better, but for what it's worth, everytime I think of "Blortal 2.0," I smile.
Anil, just wanted to thank you for spreading the word about what happened with TypePad yesterday. As a semi-professional blogger, it was reassuring to hear bits and pieces across the web from you about what was going on.
I'll be sticking with TypePad - you guys have the most responsive and helpful support team I've encountered in recent memory, and I'm sure that the app will end up rock-solid soon.
Growing pains are inevitable. The only thing that I'd suggest going forward is using your own medium, blogging, to communicate with your customers and the world. I must admit during the hours Typepad was down -- and the six people that I've evangelized and who've signed up for Typepad hammered on *me* for answers -- it would have been good to point them to an ongoing dialogue straight from the source.
A "status" sentence is unacceptable and I'm stunned that you didn't leverage the blogosphere.
Just a comment about what I think would have helped this situation as well as the previous one....Send an email letting us know that there is a problem before we discover it ourselves. I get a lot less upset with my kids for instance if they tell me that they broke something versus when I turn it on and it doesn't work. Escalating the concept, when the pilot says "we will be experiencing some turbulence" is much more calming and reassuring about his/her control of the situation than either no announcement or one after panic has set in.
I will admit panic set in when I discovered the post that I had spend considerable time working on disappeared....along with some typelist changes.
Also, you might emphasize that people ahould back-up their Typepad files and how to do it.
Thanks,
Marianne
I felt for you guys there - the outage started just as I hit "save" and got a timeout, so I noticed the whole thing.
But I know all about the unexpected, myriad things that can go wrong and how they can compound (I also remember dealing with a "our hosting facility has no more electricity" problem back in the day ... oy). It sucks, but it will all be forgiven. People love you, and they always will.
As one of TypePad's least popular bloggers, I was convinced that TypePad would do the right thing, keep me informed, and work feverishly to solve the problem, doing whatever they had to do to make it right.
I'm glad to have been proven correct, and proud to have been a TypePad subscriber since the beta test.
The offer of varying compensation for service problems a while back was the single classiest move I've seen from a company in a long time...and I appreciated that I could decline, since my service didn't suffer at the time.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that y'all do good work over there, and it's appreciated.
Sam, thanks for faith in us, and don't sell yourself short, you're *far* more popular than all the password-protected TypePad blogs. ;)
Yay! And I didn't even have to pick up a copy of "Search Engine Optimization for Dummies!"