Lately, there have been outages for two large sites: Amazon and Facebook. Working for a company that monitors such things made me able to confirm the nature of the outages.  But how I became aware of them has had me thinking in new ways for the last few weeks.

I became aware of both of these outages through a combination of FriendFeed and Twitter within minutes of them starting. This information spread quickly. And, due to the nature of these new technologies, people were able to comment on the outages, and theorize about the cause of the problems these large online firms faced.

The question you are likely asking is “So what?”. Well, as anyone who has been paying attention for the last four years should know, while you cannot completely control the conversation, you can participate in it and help prevent the spread of negative or incorrect theories about what is happening on your site.

The technologies that people who come to your site use to comment when something goes wrong can be used to interact with the customers. The classic example of this is Zappos. If you look on Twitter, you will find a number of members of that organization who are using the service to interact with customers on a human level. And if you have a problem or question, you stand an excellent chance of getting a response from the CEO if you ask a question.

So, if your site experiences an issue or problem, how do you interact with customers? Or do you just hope they don’t notice?

In today’s Boston Globe, there is an article discussing why Facebook went to the Valley instead of staying in the Boston area (article online).

Having now lived in both areas for nearly equal amounts of time, I can tell you that there are substantial differences between them. People from Boston may violently disagree, but I have found that the innovative spirit of the Valley, the one that drove the creation of the commercial Internet, does not exist here.

I am, however, someone who now laughs at the insular culture of the Valley, a place that still considers itself the center of the Internet innovation universe. I had a chance to meet with a growing Internet firm while I was out there on business last week (not Technorati), and I found the hubris and ego in the meeting that I attended laughable.

I was not laughing at this firm’s success, which has been great. I was laughing at the fact that the mid-level managers that we met with had the gall to effectively state that having their name on our customer list entitled (and yes, entitlement is also a large part of the culture) them to demand a deal that none of our customers get.

I can’t be sure what the sales guy I went with thought, but I left the meetings laughing. This company, which is younger than my youngest son, thought it had more pull with us than the multi-hundred billion financial firms we deal with daily. Thought that it had more pull than the large, first-generation Internet companies that we work closely with.

Yes, Boston does not generally fund and encourage a culture of innovation (yes, there are always exceptions). But those who seek to take the next great idea to the Internet should beware the hubris of the Valley.

Dear T-Mobile USA:

I have been a dedicated customer of yours since 2004. I have become an advocate for GSM services, and think that my brethern who continue to use CDMA services are not looking to the future, and don’t see the world coming at them.

That said, as a customer who likes gadgets and all the bells and whistles, your upgrades are pathetic.

And no, that level of emphasis is not used lightly.

I have just returned from the UK. Over there, the phone choices offered by providers stagger the imagination. Bells and whistles are yesterday — people base their lives around their phones, and the quality and range of phones available are, to say the least, impressive.

They also know that to retain customers, they have to provide astounding FREE upgrades. The latest, greatest are available as free upgrades just for becoming a slave to their contract.

I went and checked the upgrades you offer right now, T-Mobile. They suck. There is no motivation for me to stay with your service, no motivation for me not to move to another GSM provider and kiss my customer fidelity goodbye.

A simple thing: upgrade your upgrades. Please.

Thank you.

After more than a year, my first Moleskine notebook is nearly done.

A year!?!

Yes, a year. All that I have been using it for is work notes, jotting down the facts that make my customers and colleagues get up every morning.

Its replacement is in my bag, still wrapped in its cellophane, calling me; tempting me.

Technorati Tags: Moleskine, Notebook, Journal, beginning, end

Usually I classify this sort of mail as complete nonsense, and delet it. But this one was such a classic, I had to post it.

The letter is from the new CEO of the joint Borland/Segue. He is announcing that he thinks that Segue and Borland customers will be able to find cool ways to use the products of this new company…at least, after I translate it, it seems like that is what he is TRYING to say.

…

This is a great move for both of our organizations as we come together to tackle what we all know to be a key development challenge and the biggest opportunity for our industry — software quality. Borland and Segue have long shared a common belief that the challenge of software quality reaches far beyond testing and QA. Together we will approach this issue holistically, providing value at each stage of the software delivery lifecycle.

Our focus now is on the development of a comprehensive Lifecycle Quality Management solution — bringing together our unparalleled process improvement expertise with proper skills training and a true end-to-end quality technology offering. Our goal is alignment of people, process and technology, proactively driving higher standards of software quality while systematically reducing costs associated with rework and maintenance.

While continuing to enhance Segue’s quality and application performance technologies, we will also focus on delivering even tighter linkage with Borland’s broad portfolio of Application Lifecycle Management technologies. As part of a complete solution, these technologies will address quality across the entire lifecycle, eliminating quality issues at the root cause.

…

Chaucer and Shakespeare just rose from the dead, and they are looking for the marketing people who wrote this.

Technorati Tags: Fight the bull, nonsense, marketing

Looks like I will be in the Bay Area next week (Mar 20-23). I am giving a full day training on Thursday, and meeting with customers between San Francisco and San Jose before then.

It will be good to get back to the old stomping grounds for a few days.

Most likely I will be arriving Monday, flying out late Thursday night.

– Arrive: Monday Mar 20 2006
– Day trip to LA: Tuesday Mar 21
– Client meetings: Wednesday Afternoon Mar 22 2006
– All-day Client Training: Thursday Mar 23 2006
– Depart: Red-eye Evening Thursday Mar 23 2006

Technorati Tags: Travel, Bay Area, San Francisco, San Jose, Palo Alto, San Mateo

Google, if you are going to launch a Web service, better make sure it’s up and available for your customers so that they can evangelize it.

It may be good…when I can get to it.

Jeff Nolan adds his voice to the TypePad rumblings. [here]

Take away quote:

Some very experienced IT professionals are chiming in that they understand how difficult it is to run a datacenter (something I myself have not done I would add) and I am sure the empathy is well meaning. However, there are ample examples of large datacenter operations that operate with a very high degree of uptime and performance so while running a high capacity and complex datacenter may be difficult, it is being done successfully elseware.

Mena and Ben (further putting the human face on the company, a good PR tactic) may be plenty sorry, but I’m still stuck paying for shitty Typepad performance. In fact, I’d like to see this subscription software model go even further to align with customers by putting a service level agreement (SLA) in place that lays out a series of financial penalties the provider incurs when performance and availability fall below predefined thresholds. I bet they would not have to be sorry then, because companies that have these kinds of service level agreements are always highly motivated to get it right the first time.

Wow. It’s not often you read something like this.

Oh yeah, it’s the blogosphere.

Take away quote:

The question then is: if you ran out of space and were having problems, why did you continue to take on new customers during this period? Surely a responsible business with serious capacity issues would have closed their doors to new business to assure that its current clients were taken care of.

Its called greed.

The update on my Gutter Helmet posts (1 and 2) is that there is no update.

We received a phone call from a local Gutter Helmet rep about 2 weeks ago. He spoke to Samantha who, outlined some of our concerns and issues. I then called and left him a message last week, re-iterating these same concerns, and noting that there was still a leak between the new roof and the new gutters which needed to be fixed by flashing.

Nothing. No response. Silence.

I know it’s Gutter Helmet’s busy season. I know this because the number of hits to my previous posts are increasing.

Maybe some customers are experiencing better installations; I hope so. All I can do is continue to recount my experience to you.

IceRocket: Gutter Helmet, gutters, contractors, customer service