Due to the annoying popularity of the big BlogRush release, I added BlogRush to a few of my blogs. I decided to spend a few minutes clicking through to stories and find a few new blogs through the widget. After a couple pageloads, BlogRush experienced some technical difficulties resulting in the widget not be able to load.
And this is the error message that showed up in my sidebar:
Now, I’m not writing this to pick on BlogRush for their system getting overwhelmed. Almost all brand new web services that get extremely popular right off the bat are going to have some system down time. Twitter drove us all crazy with how frequently we had to look at those cats tweaking the servers.What I don’t like is the message itself. We are not experiencing technical difficulties. BlogRush is. And my site is online right now, don’t post messages on my blog saying that the site is down and to try again later.
Any body making widgets that people are supposed to use on blogs should take special care that when there is a problem displaying the widget, that the error routine clearly identifies the widget writer in the error message or maybe a simple banner for the widget site or simply displays white space.
Technorati Tags: BlogRush, blogging, internet
If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.
hmm - I see yours - is this on and off? I did not see my create a message yet
It was definitely on and off for an hour or so. It does appear to be back on now.
That’s terrible. I wouldn’t release a widget and risk having that appear on user sites.
Jacob