The Spectacular Zooomr Server Crash of 2007 has generated some interesting conversation. By way of an update, here’s the current status:
- Zoho has given Zooomr space in their datacenter and Kristopher is there now working on restoring the database
- Sun Microsystems has a server on a truck with Zooomr’s address on it as a loaner until they’re back on their feet.
- You can see the live feed on UStream’s Zooomr TV channel
However, Zooomr is not without its critics. Shelley Powers has been one of the most vocal in the comments to Robert Scoble’s blog post this morning as well as her own blog. She has some valid points, strictly speaking.
This application has been down over a week, after it went down once before with a promised rollout, after missing its initial rollout at its own startup party, following on what sounds like other downtime problems. Do you think system users should be concerned? Perhaps even, dare I say it, critical? Not on your life. Being critical is not the Web 2.0 way.
She’s right. It was risky and unconventional for Thomas Hawk to throw his lot in with a young programmer with no business experience. It was risky and cheeky for them to take on Flickr, although I don’t really see them occupying the same space. It was certainly risky to bring the community into the launch effort via UStream, and KEEP the community there when the launch did not go as planned. And she’s right: If they went to Citibank, John Hancock Insurance or any other ‘mainstream’ funding source, hat in hand asking forgiveness for missing deadlines, they’d be laughed out of the boardroom.
Shelley’s also right when she says that being critical is not the Web 2.0 way, though I’m sure she’ll disagree with my reasons for saying so. There’s more than a touch of irony and sarcasm in her post, but I see it differently. Web 2.0 is about community, and what happened today IS the Web 2.0 way. In the comments to Robert Scoble’s post, Thomas Hawk responded an overview of Zooomr’s business plan (which I touched on briefly in my first post) and with this:
Anyways. Zooomr will survive. Zooomr will survive because more than anything it is built on pure passion and love for photography and photosharing and community. And someday we will look back on these growing pains and remember that sometimes in order to do incredible things you must go through fire. We will go through fire but we will survive.
When we launched yesterday it was glorious. For about 10 glorious minutes you should have seen it. Many of us were in a chat room together and celebrating. And then we stumbled. Hard.
But you know what? There was a community there that picked us up and dusted us off and got us back on our feet. Robert Scoble. Zoho. Sun Microsystems. We got many more emails reaching out from other companies, even Microsoft. And we gotten dozens and dozens of emails from our community saying things like hey, I just donated $30. It’s all I can afford but I wanted to help out in the only way that I could.
The Zooomr Community is strong.
And that really is the core of Web 2.0. The community. It was just last week that Mike Arrington and several other widely-read bloggers (not using the “A-list” term because I don’t buy it) were writing about how the days of ‘flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-fun” just wasn’t in it anymore. And yet, the response of those who could help Zooomr has been tremendous, and Zooomr is as ‘by the seat of its pants’ as you get.
I’m a seat-of-the-pants flier too, and I like it that way. It drives me crazy to always be conventional, conservative, well-planned and to-the-letter perfect. Strictly speaking, Shelley is right. But the glory of where we are with the Internet right now is this: It is much more fluid than it is strict, and the community has a voice, a role and a presence.
I’m looking forward to Zooomr’s rebirth of Mark III with the assistance of Zoho and Sun. Both of those companies rose much higher in my estimation than they did before. I’ll break open my secret stash of Chardonnay and cheer when it comes up again, though I promise not to drop ice into my white wine, a la Thomas Hawk.
Again from Thomas Hawk’s comment:
I will never forget the generousity of the community that helped fight for Zooomr this week. I love you all.
Power to the people. The best photographs in the world have yet to be taken.
Technorati Tags: Zooomr, community, Sun, Zoho, inspiration
