Comments on: 10 Worst Web glitches of 2008 (so far)

It's a countdown of crashes, a timeline of terror. See what happens when the cloud rains on the likes of Amazon, Twitter, and Apple.

[The_Decider]

Why call them Web 2.0 disasters? What makes them so special as to get saddled with a buzzword with absolutely no meaning?

[Blah9999]

I agree completely- And how do you attribute Netflix users not getting their physical disks to a Web 2.0 problem?

[groink_hi]

In short, people are too weened on Web 2.0 services. The buzzword does have meaning; "Web 2.0" is technology that allows for interaction between people, rather than hosting static pages posted by the web page designer, aka Web 1.0. If you rely on Web 2.0-based services and do not have a contingency plan in-place in case the service is unavailable, that creates a "disaster." Things such as web-based applications, social network services, and e-commerce all have given its users an appearance of being invulnerable. The logic (or I should say "illogical") is much like, for example, leaving 1TB of data onto a USB hard drive with no backup. More and more - people who are not that technical will put all their marbles into the Web 2.0 bag. It'll just get worse and worse, but not because the engineers who develop and maintain these Web 2.0 services, but because the people who use them rely on these services too much.

[TV James]

I think "Hasbro Sucks" is more than seven letters.

[pauljweighell]

So you think stuff sucks if it doesn't allow you free use of other people's IP? Perhaps you are one of those whose dash for free stuff gums up the flakey web 2.0 offerings listed here then?

[amsoell]

How could you forget about Qtrax?! The promise of free, ad supported mp3 downloads got everyone all excited. Qtrax even sent out press releases touting contracts with all major record labels. Hours later, the same record labels sent out their own press releases claiming they've never heard of Qtrax. Of course, the "launch" was for a month, until they "relaunched" with a music player that had absolutely zero tracks available for download.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9859244-7.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13526_3-9859840-27.html

[StickyC]

RE: Cuil - I remember when Google first started out many years ago, it was plagued with downtime and was fairly miserable at searching compared to Yahoo. While the competition now has far more massive leads, dont discount Cuil yet.

[ozinvermont]

I would have thought the Youtube outage caused by a Pakistan ISP would have made the list.

[businesscontacts]

Yes, the youtube outage should be on the list

[gridwerk]

Probably no one cared about YouTube going down because few people are affected in very many meaningful ways if they cant watch Jackass kids fall of their skateboards, Obama tribute propaganda, or jailbait teeny-boppers dancing in their underwear to the latest Fiddy-Cent "tune".

[Igloo888888]

Cuil is a brutal search engine. It has a LONG LONG LONG way to go to even get into top 10 material, never mind rival Google.

[ocpinay]

I love this article! Reliability is a quality web technology companies have to work on - sometimes the publicity hype is a product's downfall - especially when they fail to anticipate just how big a commotion they may cause.

[carlitosway74]

Would the Sony PS3 2.40 firmware debacle apply? Tons of users had to send their PS3's to Sony and at first Sony was going to charge them $50 to get their systems to work. Its been fixed since but what a nightmare for PS3 gamers!

YouTube is used for Jack Ass videos, but also for seminars and corporate training that folks don't mind being seen by the public. Some large companies, but also some small ones are in the mix. So YouTube being down does have a monetary (other than advertising revenue) value.

[pauljweighell]

and the ratio between junk vids and corporate training is ?

[AppleSuxLeo]

None of my free MSFT provided services ever went down. Hmmmm...trust Apple or Google ? Not !

[MiamiWebDesigner]

Gartner Group Gaffs and "Web 2.0" Techno-Hype

The renowned Gartner Group's latest Hype Cycle report places "Web 2.0" in a "Trough of Disillusionment":

http://tinyurl.com/6ycvs8

But for a few good chuckles, I suggest you Google the following and browse the first 20-30 listings:

failures Gartner Group
warnings Gartner Group
Gartner Group expects
Gartner Group predicts

As for "Web 2.0?, like so many tech articles posted since Tim O'Reilly (or was it Dale Dougherty?) first coined the term in 2004 (or was it 2005?), this one references "Web 2.0" as if it were something tangible--or at least a concept with clear, concise definition. It is not. In 2006, Web founder Sir Tim Berners-Lee sagely observed that "nobody knows what it means":

http://tinyurl.com/y6ewzy

In 2007, Michael Wesch put together this video that supposedly "explains what Web 2.0 really is about":

http://tinyurl.com/6pdz2q

It is a cool video. But the message is all about XML and how it can be used to separate form and content. There was no mention of CSS and XHTML, but no matter. I was writing XML parsers in the '90s, and XHTML/CSS web design pre-dates "Web 2.0" as well.

And now in 2008, the most honest thing we can say is that "Web 2.0" means whatever the techno-marketeer (ab)using it wants it to mean. Otherwise, why would intelligent people like Isaac O'Bannon still be writing articles asking "What is Web 2.0?":

http://tinyurl.com/5solok

And, why would McKinsey's just-released best-of-breed report entitled "Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise" ...

http://tinyurl.com/6sxls7

... include no attempt at defining the term other than to list the "Web 2.0 Tools" that comprise or enable it? And even there, the chief ingredient is identified only as "Web Services", adding more mystery to the mix as one ethereal term is offered up to explain another.

As originated in an Onstartups.com website design posting...

http://tinyurl.com/576sgs

... "Web 2.0" is like pornography: Nobody has defined it; you just have to know it when you see it.

Bruce Arnold, Web Design Miami Florida
http://www.PervasivePersuasion.com

[-=Taipan=-]

I was sitting here eating a jelly donut and wondering when YouTube was going to fail.

Greets
www.online-artikel.de

[jackvalko]

This 'phenom' is nothing new. The internet is a best-effort network, served by hortizontal infrastructure that is *designed* for failure. Moreover, the culture of internet engineering is largely tolerate of failures (except online financials). I'm surprised the bloody thing still works at all. Can we all right now decide this is just how it is and move on to some real news? I heard they found bigfoot!

[pauljweighell]

The net was designed to meet failure by the use of redundant path messaging and it has worked pretty well for decades now. The major apps like banking, military and trading seem pretty bullet proof to me. All the outages listed here are apps that were not designed as failsafe systems that can survive being flooded with the high volumes of junk that defines most of web 2.0 - i.e. free usage apps that just connect a load of kids to each other for no apparently useful purpose other than selling them rubbish. So we have a pattern here. Paid apps seem not to fail and free ones do. Are we surprised?

[lennysan]

I reviewed a few more events along these lines:
http://www.transparentuptime.com/2008/08/do-you-trust-cloud.html

[techiegirl2]

great list.

[Mike Z]

So youtube going down isn't meaningful, but Scrabulous is?????

While I agree that youtube isn't *that* hard of a hit, it's far cry from losing scrabulous. Like, OMG, however will people get their game fix?

[mnl1121]

YouTube going done because of the Pakistan ISP isn't a glitch. Well pretty much. They meant to block YouTube from Pakistan users and instead caused all of youtube to go out. a glitch but not one caused by the youtube company (google). All these glitches were caused by the company themselves.

[bbneo2]

What type of cheese do you want with your "whine"?
So things aren't perfect? Eh? How many times have you had to reboot your Windows machine in the past year to restart your client email app to read your email? 5? 10? more? much more? Yeah. Me too.

Google gets a big pass from me for running such a massive, fantastic free webmail/personal cloud service. If you've got all the answers, run your own damn email server.