Tumblr Has Tumbled. When Will It Get Back Up?

By  |  Monday, December 6, 2010 at 8:15 am

Yesterday afternoon, popular minimalist blogging service Tumblr went down, taking every Tumblr blog with it. As I write this, the outage continues–it’s surely earned a spot in the Hall of Shame reserved for the longest, most crippling downtimes ever suffered by major Internet services.

The Tumblr folks haven’t done a great job of crisis control, either. The error message you get when you try to visit the Tumblr homepage or any Tumblr blog still talks about the site being back “shortly” and Tumblr working “quickly” to restore service. But by now, it’s clear that the outage isn’t short, and fixing things is turning out to be anything but a speedy process. In fact, the more recent of the two updates posted to Tumblr’s Twitter account says the recovery is “slow and painful.” That Tweet also says that the company is “almost through” dealing with the database issue that caused the crippling glitch. But the site remains down.

Except for truly extreme cases, even Web services that suffer extended outages generally bounce back. But I wonder if any Tumblr bloggers will take their business elsewhere as a result of this mess–or at least create a backup site for use in case of emergency?

 
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6 Comments For This Post

  1. jen Says:

    I doubt anyone will leave the service unless this kind of blackout becomes a more regular occurrence. There is nothing else out there that works quite like tumblr, and people are attached to it. But I for one will certainly be backing up my blog the moment it's back up, assuming (and praying) it comes back up without any losses.

  2. jltnol Says:

    One word: CLOUD.

    This is why I would never, EVER trust the "Cloud" with my precious data.

  3. Trenton Hart Says:

    Cloud?

  4. @BAMitsSam908 Says:

    I never thought i'd be so lost without Tumblr. I'm honestly upset. I keep checking like, every hour if it's back on. And when it is, I will happy dance. :3

  5. Hanah Says:

    I am very lost without Tumblr, I was hoping that it would be up by now. However, I would rather have them take their time and fix the problem once and for all versus having a quick fix and have it go down again…
    I like other "tumblrs" have lots of support for the site, and probably will not leave due to this blackout. I agree with Jen, there is no other service out there quite like Tumblr. <3

  6. -mayfair Says:

    Tumblr will live forever. A short lived flu means that we will come back and feed it cookies and cocoa and tell him not to be sick again.
    Yes it is that bad and we are that attached, but papa David would never hurt us on purpose and I am sure he is suffering just as much as we do right now, even more.