Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Foursquare gets transparency

Early Monday morning of this week, Foursquare went down hard:



11 hours later, the #caseofthemondays was over and they were back online. Throughout the those 11 hours, users had one of the following experiences:


1. When visiting foursquare.com, they saw:



2. When using the iPhone/Android/Blackberry app, they saw an error telling them the service is down and to try again later.

3. When checking Twitter (the not default source of downtime information), they saw a lot of people complaining and the following tweets from the official @foursquare account (if they thought of checking the @foursquare account):


Those were the only options available to a user of Foursquare for those 11 hours. A important question we need to answer is whether anyone seriously cared. Are users of consumer services like Foursquare legitimately concerned with Foursquare's downtime? Are they going to leave for competing services or just quit the whole check-in game? I'd like to believe that 11 hours of downtime matters, but honestly it's too early to tell. This will be a great test of the stickiness and Whuffie that Foursquare has built up.

The way I see it is that this is one strike against Foursquare (which includes the continued instability they've seen since Monday). They probably won't see a significant impact to their user base. However, if this happens again, and again, and again, the story changes. And as I've argued, downtime is inevitable. Foursquare will certainly go down again. They key is not reducing downtime to zero, but how you handle that downtime to avoid giving your competition an opening and even more importantly using that downtime to build trust and loyalty with your users. How do you accomplish this? Transparency.

We've talked about the benefits of transparency, why transparency works, and how to implement it. We saw above how Foursquare handled the pre- and intra- downtime steps (not well), so let's take a look at how they did in the post-downtime phase by reviewing the public postmortem (both of them) they published. As always, let's run it through the gauntlet



Prerequisites:
  1. Admit failure - Excellent. The entire first paragraph describes the downtime, and how painful it was to users.
  2. Sound like a human - Very much. This has never been a problem for Foursquare. The tone is very trustworthy.
  3. Have a communication channel - Prior to the event, all they had were their twitter accounts and their API developer forums. As a result of this incident, they have since launched http://status.foursquare.com/, and have promised to update @4sqsupport on a regular basis throughout the incident.
  4. Above all else, be authentic - This may be the biggest thing going for them. 
Requirements:
  1. Start time and end time of the incident - Missing. All we know is that they were down for 11 hours. I don't see this as being critical in this case, but it would have been nice to have.
  2. Who/what was impacted - A bit vague, but the impression was that everyone was impacted.
  3. What went wrong - Extremely well done. I feel very informed, and can sympathize with the situation.
  4. Lessons learned - Again, extremely well done. I love the structure they used: What happened, What we’ll be doing differently – technically speaking, What we’re doing differently – in terms of process. Very effective.
Bonus:
  1. Details on the technologies involved - Yes!
  2. Answers to the Five Why's - No :(
  3. Human elements - heroic efforts, unfortunate coincidences, effective teamwork, etc - Yes!
  4. What others can learn from this experience - Yes!


Other takeaways:

  • Foursquare launched a public heath status feed! Check it out at http://status.foursquare.com/.
  • I really like the structure used in this postmortem. It has inspired me to want to create a basic template for postmortems. Stay tuned...
  • Could this be Facebook's Friendster moment? I hope not. My personal project rely's completely on Foursquare.
  • I've come to realize that for in most cases, downtime is less impactful to the long term success of a business than site performance. Downtime users understand and just try again later. Slowness eats away at you, you start to hate using the service and jump on an opportunity to use something more fun/fast/pleasant.
Going forward, the big question will be whether Foursquare maintains their new processes, keeps the status blog up to date, and can fix their scalability issues. I for one am rooting for them.

26 comments:

  1. I am not sure whether this post is written by him as nobody else know such detailed about my difficulty. You are amazing, Thanks. free amazon gift card

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you so much admin is already providing the information to us and here we are sorry permission to share articles may be useful for all of you in particular who are looking for Cara mengatasi trigliserida tinggi

    ReplyDelete
  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I love this post here is more information for us thanks for sharing with us.
    Escorts Delhi

    ReplyDelete
  6. I like to seeing this helpful post.Thanks for your information! Keep sharing. Let me share this..
    erp in chennai | erp providers chennai

    ReplyDelete
  7. Enchanted such an extraordinary add up to be here, a huge amount of accommodating data are here which is informative.i going to bookmark your site please keep posting.It's an unimaginable post.
    HP Support Number UK

    ReplyDelete
  8. Website you manage very neat and not boring. I was really amazed by you. The contents of the article is very original. thanks for the work, may be a inpirasi for everything. obat maag kronis

    ReplyDelete
  9. This is also a very good post which I really enjoyed reading. It is not everyday that I have the possibility to see something like this.

    lennyfacetext.com

    ReplyDelete
  10. I truly value investigating and taking after your post as I discover them to a wonderful degree supportive and fascinating. This post is equivalently enlightening and
    moreover enrapturing

    Asus Support

    Asus Helpline Number

    ReplyDelete
  11. You've created charming post, I am going to bookmark this page, thankful for data. I truly esteem your own specific position and I will make sure to return here


    Norton Support Number

    Norton Contact Number UK

    ReplyDelete
  12. I was working and suddenly I visits your site frequently and recommended it to me to read also. The writing style is superior and the content is relevant. Thanks for the insight you provide the readers!

    www.baixar-whatsapp.com.br

    ReplyDelete
  13. Hello, its been a long time no to see a nice post about jasa pembuatan website like this before,
    thanks for this jasa pembuatan website profesional information,
    I know well about jasa pembuatan website murah di jakarta,
    so if you wanna have a good site you can visit my website http://jasabuatwebsite.info
    you will see something new in that jasa website
    I m so inspired when i see your article like my web jasabuatwebsite.info business, never forget about this
    thanks a lot friends

    ReplyDelete
  14. Thank you for your information the post article viste along time # Fooglepackers.com

    http://www.fooglepackers.com/packersmoversnoida.html
    http://www.fooglepackers.com/packersmoverspune.html
    http://www.fooglepackers.com/packersmoversbangalore.html
    http://www.fooglepackers.com/packersmoversgurgaon.html

    ReplyDelete
  15. Thank for more information the post article find everything for me # Foogle Packers Movers

    http://www.fooglepackers.com/packersmoverschennai.html
    http://www.fooglepackers.com/packersmoversmumbai.html
    http://www.fooglepackers.com/packersmovershyderabad.html
    http://www.fooglepackers.com/packersmoversdelhi.html

    ReplyDelete
  16. very good article and useful once for my admin and pardon me permission to share articles herein may be useful and helpful Cara menyembuhkan hemoptisis

    ReplyDelete
  17. Thank You for great article and choose us SuhuWeb.com jasa pembuatan website profesional Custom website designs with strategic insights to generate greater brand engagement, higher conversions and measurable results. visit us for your review article on http://suhuweb.com - Jasa pembuatan website murah. And dont forget ot visit jasa pembuatan toko online on https://filloshop.com

    ReplyDelete
  18. This blog is so nice to me. I will continue to come here again and again. Visit my link as well. Good luck
    cara menggugurkan kandungan
    cara menggugurkan kandungan
    obat penggugur kandungan

    ReplyDelete
  19. An excellent information provided thanks for all the information i must say great efforts made by you. thanks a lot for all the information you provided.

    http://word-cookies-answers.com

    ReplyDelete
  20. Get Periods Immediately How to Get Periods Immediately In One Day Natural Home Remedies 2018

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.