Question: What happens when the nation’s top online retail site goes down for a couple of hours?
Answer: The world ends.
At least that’s what one could have assumed by the panic that flooded the web after 1:30PM today.
It was around that time that Amazon.com’s homepage began displaying a message that read “HTTP/1.1 Service Unavailable.” Almost immediately, forums, blogs, Digg, Twitter, and every other social website was filled with messages announcing the downtime.
Emotions ranged from anger to confusion to sheer laughter, as people discussed the implications for the retail giant.
It’s estimated that the site lost nearly $31,000 for every minute that it was inactive. And the impact was seen almost instantly on the company’s stock value, down 2.7% in early afternoon trading.
The site is back up now (and was really only down for about 2 hours), but the damage has already been done. In my time on the web (and believe me, I spend a lot of time on here), I’ve never seen a site receive so much negative customer attention within such a short time period.
But if Amazon needs advice on how to restore relationships after today, they should just ask Twitter. They seem to have mastered the art of rebounding after regularly failing e-service.
Okay. That was harsh. I still love you Twitter. And Amazon, too.
