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You Can’t Compare Technorati to Amazon

It’s rare that I get into a public debate with a fellow Enterprise Irregular, but today is the day:

Michael Krigsman at ZDNet’s Project Failures cites the stellar response by Technorati as exemplary customer communication at a time of system failure that Amazon should learn from.

True, Amazon did not shine (that’s an understatement) when S3 went down earlier today. I’m sure Amazon will work on not only improving infrastructure, but communication – like Salesforce.com did after their major outage, establishing an Health Monitor, reminds us Lassy Dignan at ZDNet.

True, Technorati was exceptionally forthcoming in that particular incident – but the emphasis is on exceptionally, which is why I would not set them as role model for quite a while. Infrastructure problems have been the constant state of affairs for Technorati for years, the Technorati Monster is still at large, and most of these problems have been swiped under the carpet. In fact when they recently removed old posts from their online index without any notification, they explicitly stated they hoped most users wouldn’t notice.

I salute Technorati on their new approach to transparency, if it holds – but they are very, very far from being a role model.smile_sad

Comments

  1. Zoli, Appreciate your comments, but I wasn’t trying to boil the ocean on Technorati. I was only reacting to this one situation, without commenting or making inferences to the company’s overall record of support.
    As one of their customers, I can second your complaints about their support history. On the other hand, they did a great job this time.

  2. Agree on the “this time” part – hope that will be the new religion from now on 🙂

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