Yes, there is a downside to all this Web 2.0 goodness. First off, was it just me or was GMail unavailable for most of the day today? This comes as I find myself relying on GMail for more and more for my primary email usage. Frustrating… More frustrating than all the spam I’m suddenly seeing in my Sevenapril account.
Secondly, 30Boxes is completely offline. This too after I have started to use it for more than just tracking work stuff. I’m onto my second account after the first one got killed by an ugly import bug…
It’s all good having your stuff online; no matter where you go as long as you have a connection your stuff is there waiting for you. The obvious downside is that someone else is holding your data. If they decide to pull the plug you’re done. I’m not sure that this is the case with 30Boxes but it’s cause for concern.
No one seems to think that we are in another web bubble but I have to wonder. Yahoo is apparently questioning their purchase of Flickr. It’s expensive as hell to run and provides very little oppourtunity to generate revenue from it. I don’t have a Pro account and I sure as hell won’t be ordering any prints. Seems like many are of the same mind.
What is the point of all this blathering? Just a reminder that things are looking a little 2000ish to me. I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised to see the lights go out on some of these free, beta services. Seek out the Export feature of your favourite web service, back up your GMail to Thunderbird. Sometimes it’s good to remember that you get what you pay for…
Update: I just came across this article on Blogcritics which appears to agree with me 
Even Caterina Fake concurs but she’s already her money, so I doubt she cares very much…
Technorati Tags: Web 2.0, GMail, Sevenapril, 30Boxes, bubble, Yahoo, Flickr, beta, web service
7 comments ↓
We (30 Boxes) are migrating DNS servers (causing outages). One nice thing about Web2.0 is that you can have one of the founders of a company answer your complaint directly on your blog.
Perhaps they should change their slogan to,
Yeah, that’s pretty cool alright.
You’ve got to admit, having a company founder respond directly is a pretty cool thing!
I have to admit to not using 30boxes before, but I’m surprised there wasn’t prior warning of possible outages. I definitely agree about keeping all your Web2.0 data backed up somewhere - RSS subscriptions, del.icio.us/magnolia bookmarks and even your own blog databases. Never rely on a server you don’t control!
I really like 30Boxes and I’m using it a lot these days (well, I’m still migrating from the import bug…) but I was surprised that there was nothing said to the users. A DNS change can take up to 48 hours to propagate, so it’s not like the site would be down for 20 minutes…
I subscribe to their blog but there was nothing sent out via RSS. Odd from a company based on social and sharing values. I think it’s pretty cool that Narendra took the time to respond. Maybe next time they will alert all their users!
Technorati is your friend
Things should be back to normal. We should have posted it on our blog before (sorry!) but DNS took that down as well
What is the wp plugin for these AJAX comments? They are sweet.
Actually, the comments functionality is a part of K2 (http://getk2.com/). I’m pretty sure you could find it on its own or rip it out of K2. I think they are using script.aculo.us to pull it off…