Just Work Please: Mainstream Media Meets the Fail Whale
Feb 25, 2009 Read/Write Web
pimg alt=”ABCNews.jpg” src=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/ABCNews.jpg” width=”150″ height=”66″ /The online world is an imperfect place. a href=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/gmail_give_millions_a_holiday.php”Gmail goes down/a, chunks of a href=”http://twitter.com/marshallk/status/1248273755″blog posts disappear/a, and user are a href=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_talk_targeted_by_phishi.php”deceived on a regular basis/a. Most of us who spend time online are aware of – and have come to expect – these foibles and hiccups. But now, throngs of mainstream media outlets are entering the fray with a bit of naivete, rushing to use online services that may not yet be ready for prime time – literally. ABC News learned their lesson the hard way during US President Obama’s address to Congress./p
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pLeading up to the speech, ABC engaged in a a href=”http://www.abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=6941694page=1″great deal of promotion/a – anchor Terry Moran referred to it several times as a “a href=”http://twitter.com/TerryMoran/status/1246293568″Twitter-anza/a” – around the fact that they would have a live Twitter stream of comments during the Obama speech. Unfortunately for them, the a href=”http://microblink.com/2009/02/24/abc-news-captures-feedback-with-live-twitter-stream/”much ballyhooed Twitter stream/a choked, got stuck, and then failed miserably in the midst of a major broadcast, forcing ABC to pull it from the site. /p
centerimg alt=”ABCObama.jpg” src=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/ABCObama.jpg” width=”600″ height=”402″ //center
pNow, we know what you’re thinking. But this had nothing to do with Twitter. Rather, it had to do with an aptly named server “justworkplease.handbrewed.com.” A server that supports a service called a href=”http://www.thingfo.com/socialsite”SocialSite/a, which – in their defense – is still “in private alpha.” The service probably seemed like a good bet, given that it was also used for the a href=”http://blog.thingfo.com/2008/12/22/barack-obama-inauguration-widget/”Obama inauguration/a. But be that as it may, the service is still in strongprivate alpha/strong. It’s not the safest bet for adding a server-melting Twitter stream to your site./p
pABC News learned that lesson in a very public way./p
h2If at First You Don’t Succeed/h2
pHopefully, this event doesn’t scare ABC – or other news outlets – too far away from trying things like this again. It’s online. These things happen. /p
pOther news outlets – a href=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hurricane_gustav_on_the_web_reference_guide.php”like CNN/a – have learned how to incorporate Twitter into the work that they do – and they’ve had a href=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitter_security_collapses_oba.php”their own stumbles/a as well. Properties like Twitter have had their scalability issues, but they have learned how to scale for the sheer volume of users that descend upon sites during events such as these./p
pABC may have to weather a bit of snark for it, but it’s a great learning experience for them. And a testament to the sheer volume of users who share their opinions via Twitter – and the potential the service holds. /p
pHere’s hoping the next endeavor is more successful for them – and the users who expected to share their opinions with other ABC viewers./p
pema href=”http://flickr.com/photos/edubyad/3307402309/”Screenshot courtesy edubyad/a./em/p
stronga href=”http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/just_work_please_mainstream_media_fail.php#comments-open”Discuss/a/strong
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