Advertlets Downtime Explained

When Bobby first alerted me that my blog was inaccessible last Saturday, I admit I wasn't too concerned. After all, I was still receiving comments and I had complete access to my blog. Five minutes later, I started to panic as I suddenly lost access to my blog and each time I clicked on my URL, I was redirected to an Advertlets page. I quickly tried to reach some of my favourite blog friends like Janice, MT, Adrian, Spiff and LJ but the same thing happened and I couldn't access their blogs too. I was really worried by then as I'm not that IT-savvy and the thought of something terrible happening to my blog sure got me frantic for fear of being unable to fix it on my own!

I later discovered that Advertlets were having problems on their end and the best move I did for my blog was to temporarily remove all the Advertlets ads on my blog, which immediately rectified the error. Thanks Bobby for bringing the problem to light. Today, I received an apology email from Advertlets, so I'd like to share it here with my readers, so they too can get a clearer understanding on what actually transpired. Hopefully this plight will be resolved soon. I thank all of you for your patience during my down time and am glad to say that Mariuca is now back online!

Hi,

This is Josh Lim here from Advertlets. This message is sent out to all bloggers that have registered with Advertlets in our key markets of Malaysia & Singapore.

Firstly, we admit. We made an error in judgment, and we did not intend for this to happen. And we are very sorry that it did, and would like to apologize for everyone affected.

Some small mistakes are resolved easily, and affect a few. And some mistakes, however small, can affect millions.

Most of you are probably disappointed, confused or angry at the recent downtime that has happened, that has cut off access to your blogs. Over the past few days, we have been doing everything we can to restore service, as well as answering e-mails, phone calls, smses, media interviews, and support requests.

Its hard to apologize to more than 15,000 members, and this e-mail was hard to type, but undoubtedly necessary. And first, I'll probably be best to start by answering questions you might have:

What happened?

A complication in the renewal process caused the Advertlets.com domain to expire, and caused issues for bloggers with our ads installed, which made their blogs redirect to a placeholder page. It was not our intent to do so. Advertlets.com blog users were unable to login to their Advertlets accounts and access the website as well.

How many did it affect?

According to our statistics, it affected 30-65% of traffic to our network over the past 2 days. On most days, we experience between 3-4 million ad impressions per day. The viewers of most blogs were affected in some way, depending on the nature of how DNS settings would resolve in different countries and ISPs. Some would resolve faster, some would not, which caused varying experiences for viewers in different places.

What can I do to resolve the problem?

You can follow some troubleshooting steps listed at http://advertlets.blogspot.com, a site temporarily set up to assist in

this issue. Or, you can remove your code for the time being, and we will notify you when it has been fully resolved.

Whose fault is it?

Ours. The short answer is that it is our fault. The longer answer is that we tried everything we could as soon as we knew, however, some uncontactable and uncooperative parties made it harder. Nevertheless, the blame lies with us, and we will take full responsibility for it, and to resolve it.

What will happen to my current earnings?

Your current earnings will be retained within the system, and we will continue to serve paid ads for you to continue to earn in future.

If I choose to continue with Advertlets, can I be assured that this will never happen again? And how do you intend to compensate us for the error?

The domain has also been renewed, and we will make sure that this can never happen again. We resolve to do better in future, and have more failsafe options available. A financial compensation plan is being worked out, and will be announced on after we have assessed the full situation.

Will we be continuing operations?

Yes. Paid ads are beginning to be served through the system again in available locations.

Where is service available as of now? How soon until everything is okay?

We've received reports that most of the DNS has successfully resolved for the following ISPs:

- Jaring (Malaysia)

- TMNet (Malaysia)

- Starhub Maxonline (Singapore)

- PT Telkom (Indonesia)

Service is continuing to be restored throughout the rest of Asia and the world and all service should be fully restored in less than 12 hours.

Its heartening that some have been of great assistance to us in this difficult time, providing us with service updates from their area as well as moral support. But to those that were frustrated, we understand your frustration, and it frustrates us even more to have been the source of it. All in all, we are still in awe as to how passionate all of you are.

And how many people have chosen to make Advertlets part of their channel of expression. It is our hope that you can continue to do so. Service is close to being 100% restored, and we will be notifying all when service is fully functional, to assist you with your decision on the continued use of our services. Your impressions are your votes. And if you can forgive us, we will make sure your trust is never again misplaced.

We will be making some personnel changes and new additions to ensure that everything - support, ad loading time, code, and more run smoothly in future. Major upgrades to the system are due in February, in the form of Advertlets 2.0 with new ad formats, referrals, earning graphs, social features, and traffic generation facilities. And of course morecontests, advertising revenue and sponsored post opportunities.

We hope that in the next few days we can prove ourselves again to you, nevertheless, our redemption will be in your hands. Once again, we apologize.

Regards,

Josh Lim
On behalf of all at Advertlets.com