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July 2, 2007

Tailrank Goes Blank, But Nobody Notices

Michael Arrington

34 comments »

Tailrank, a news aggregator that competes with TechMeme, has been having trouble keeping up to date with the news lately. For the last few weeks at least the technology section of the site has had no news whatsoever, a complete blank. Sometime yesterday the rest of the site went blank, too. The header and footer were there but there was no news showing at all in any category.

I emailed founder Kevin Burton late yesterday to see what the problem was. He responded “Just in the middle of a big uprade to Spinn3r which is causing more work for Tailrank. Basically a large infrastructure upgrade.” Shortly thereafter the site went live again, but all of the stories are days old. The most recent story in the Technology section is 3 days old, for example.

The fact that the technology section was down for weeks and no one seemed to notice or write about it suggests that the site isn’t being read regularly by very many people. But Burton may have a bigger problem on his hands - Tailrank is basically a showcase for the technology behind his other startup, Spinn3r, which provides blog indexing and ranking services to other sites.

If Tailrank can’t stay up to date with the news, how can partners rely on the underlying technology?

This may get itself sorted out - Burton says above and on his blog that a major upgrade is in process. But the messaging is coming only after we emailed him to see what the problem is. And however large the upgrade, it shouldn’t degrade the service for weeks at a time. This isn’t in the Deadpool yet, but it’s close.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Monday, July 2nd, 2007 at 4:59 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. TechCrunch.com - Bull! « Robert Mena

    July 16th, 2007 at 3:30 pm

  2. Time To DeadPool TailRank? You Decide.

    July 22nd, 2007 at 6:37 pm

  3. Tailrank 2.5 Launches. It Still Falls Short

    October 4th, 2007 at 6:38 pm

  4. Breaking the Techmeme Habit - BuzzYA!

    April 4th, 2008 at 2:50 pm

Comments

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  1. sputnick

    July 2nd, 2007 at 5:06 am

    I like the “my friend” part in their “No results found” notice. Any company that’s that friendly can’t be all bad. I’m sure they’ll work things out.

  2. t.a.m.s.y.

    July 2nd, 2007 at 5:30 am

    Sorry my friend… but I just can’t trust a site that doesn’t know when to use commas.

  3. MG

    July 2nd, 2007 at 5:37 am

    A comma isn’t necessary. If you base your trust issues on proper grammar, you’re not looking at a very big picture my friend.

  4. RM

    July 2nd, 2007 at 6:05 am

    Wow Mike Arrington you seem to report this as if you have something against them.? I think its unfair to state it like you did. Yea, its not good what happened, but I think if problems keep occurring, then its enough to say “This isn’t in the Deadpool yet, but it’s close.”

    Give them a break!

  5. Raul M

    July 2nd, 2007 at 6:28 am

    Ops! links to techmeme points to tailrank — or is intentional?

    http://daily.bitekleta.com/ima.....chmeme.JPG

  6. amit chowdhry

    July 2nd, 2007 at 9:13 am

    i want to see tailrank make a come-back. my blog gained quite a few hits from it when tailrank was fully functional.

  7. Kevin Burton

    July 2nd, 2007 at 9:52 am

    “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

    You’re SO far from the truth hear Michael that this borders on complete journalistic incompetence.

    Your post is factually inaccurate. The site was not “down for weeks” … we HAVE had a few *glitches* in the last couple of weeks but this is because Tailrank is on older technology which was (for the most part) upgraded last night.

    I told you via email that there was NO story here but for some reason you decided to post anyway.

    We’re FAR from being in the deadpool and are in fact planning a BIG announcement next week including changes to Tailrank and Spinn3r!

    I told you this was part of an INFRASTRUCTURE upgrade that we were doing. The BIGGEST one we’ve done TO DATE!

    If we were working on such a LARGE piece of technology WHY WOULD WE BE IN THE DEADPOOL?

    We’re at the most healthiest point we’ve EVER been as a company. We actually need to start hiring again in the next few weeks.

    Hell. We’re PROFITABLE AND HAVE NEVER TAKEN VC! How many companies out there can say that?

    You can count them on one hand!

    Seriously dude. This is complete nonsense. You owe me and all your readers an apology and a retraction.

  8. wino

    July 2nd, 2007 at 10:33 am

    Deadpool beotch!

  9. EH

    July 2nd, 2007 at 11:51 am

    Damn that “older technology!”

  10. Ravi

    July 2nd, 2007 at 12:01 pm

    yeah man, once in a while everyone has a problem or two!
    Dont dead-pool them, give them a chance

  11. Funny

    July 2nd, 2007 at 12:24 pm

    At one point I thought this Burton dude was going to start typing AOL style:

    LeAVE ThE pOOR CapS LoCK kEY ALonE, mR bURtOn. iT IS innOCEnt !!!!!

  12. ted

    July 2nd, 2007 at 12:33 pm

    Hell. We’re PROFITABLE AND HAVE NEVER TAKEN VC! How many companies out there can say that?

    You can count them on one hand!

    Sorry, that’s factually inaccurate and totally untrue. Perhaps in your silicon-valley-centric world, this is the case, but there are literally thousands if not tens of thousands of highly profitable websites, a great many of them likely far more profitable then yours.

    Not to say Tailrank isn’t a great site, or that your profitibility isn’t something to be proud of, but it’s hardly unique. I’d also like to know just how profitable you are. Are we talking just above break-even, or are we talking about real money?

  13. Matt

    July 2nd, 2007 at 12:33 pm

    Tailrank has a good team, good technology, and are in an interesting market. I think they’ll be fine.

  14. n/a

    July 2nd, 2007 at 1:36 pm

    “If we were working on such a LARGE piece of technology WHY WOULD WE BE IN THE DEADPOOL?”

    Size has nothing to do with the value or life of a product. “LARGE” doesn’t automatically mean “relevant.”

    Also, caps lock is cruise control for cool.

  15. tailtank

    July 2nd, 2007 at 1:59 pm

    Sorry Kevin, but a quick Technorati search shows another post from the 26th of May that says that Tailrank was down:

    http://www.notsorelevant.com/2.....y-problem/

    the post on Techwag that is linked to from the article here says that the problems were very persistent, too. I suggest you chill out and not blame this on Techcrunch - they are just reporting what they saw.

    You should focus on keeping the site alive - there is no reason, upgrade or not, for a site to be down for so long

  16. Kevin Burton

    July 2nd, 2007 at 2:39 pm

    tailtank…..

    I DID say that we have had issues here and there for the last month as we bring the new infrastructure online.

    Interesting that we have downtime which is a FRACTION of other sites (including Techcrunch, Twitter, etc) yet we’re deadpooled..

  17. Anatoly

    July 2nd, 2007 at 2:39 pm

    And here I was, thinking that TailRank was an alternative to Hot or Not.

  18. TailStank

    July 2nd, 2007 at 3:16 pm

    but that notsorelevant post claims week(s) downtime, which is a multiple (not a FRACTION) of combined downtime of techcrunch, twitter, even zooomer

  19. wag

    July 2nd, 2007 at 3:21 pm

    yeah, arrington is wrong. the worst-case scenario for tailrank is a future as a (likely very high-traffic) porn rating site!

  20. aandarian

    July 2nd, 2007 at 5:10 pm

    Whats with the hostility?

  21. Kevin Burton

    July 2nd, 2007 at 5:17 pm

    The real secret is that Tailrank is just a domain squatting campaign to extort $$ form hotornot. You guys busted me! :)

    Now I just need to follow up with James to get my payday.

  22. Michael Arrington

    July 2nd, 2007 at 5:39 pm

    Hey Kevin, being down for weeks, or partially down, or whatever, is a story. Take it as a compliment that you matter. A lot of startups die and never get mentioned again. I look forward to the rebirth, or new launch, or whatever is next.

  23. Kevin Burton

    July 2nd, 2007 at 8:35 pm

    Michael….. Nice to know we matter….

    I’ll chalk this up to other famous Techcrunch posts such as “RIP Ning” or the new Netscape.com being a ‘digg killer’ :)

    Kevin

  24. Timmy

    July 2nd, 2007 at 9:37 pm

    How’s the war-dating going, Kevin?

  25. Arun Vijayan

    July 3rd, 2007 at 12:15 am

    I liked TailRank. And even noticed famous Startup writers “refused” to profile them when they started months ago. They were unlucky at that time.

    Downtimes can be a story, but I am sure that they will come back with stuff. No doubt.

  26. somaking

    July 3rd, 2007 at 10:56 am

    Kevin,

    A posting on techcrunch does NOT mean you MATTER. In fact, I typically avoid lawyers’ advice on technical and business matters. WHY should I listen to Mike Arroganton?

  27. patricia

    July 3rd, 2007 at 2:25 pm

    Inside voices, please ;)

  28. cool INTERNET guy

    July 4th, 2007 at 8:58 pm

    Websites are SERIOUS BUSINESS. I know EVERYTHING so I type LIKE THIS to show how forceful and PERSUASIVE I am. WHY am I failing to PERSUADE you?! I’m a cool INTERNET GUY and if you don’t agree with me you’re stupid, and worse, you don’t GET IT. God!

  29. Fake Kevin Burton

    July 4th, 2007 at 10:44 pm

    Hey guys,

    Sorry about not responding earlier, just found this thread.

    The truth is, I was busy picking up chicks by hacking into their AIM via wifi at coffee shops here in SF.

    Anyway, got back to this one’s pad, but she turned out to be a tranny and kidnapped me for two weeks while my site was down.

    The good news - I’m back, and so is Tailrank.

    - Fake Kevin Burton

  30. Kevin Burton

    July 22nd, 2007 at 7:28 pm

    Why can anyone say that they’re Kevin Burton, Michael, ever thought of picking up the phone?

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