To Close The Blacknight Matter

November 17, 2009 at 11:29 am

I posted on Friday about my disappointment that Blacknight doesn’t properly use the tools available to it in times of crisis. While many people commented on the blog, seemingly Michele Neylon (MD of Blacknight) wasn’t able to. He claimed to have posted his comment twice and insinuated on Twitter that I was receiving these comments and choosing not to publish.

That is not true.

It’s also irritating that someone who was clearly having technical difficulties at his end chose to publicly insinuate an untruth about me on Twitter (a very public space) – about something that was factually incorrect.

On Friday I emailed Michele and asked him to email me directly and I would publish his comments. I heard nothing back. I emailed him again yesterday because I believe in open discussion and sincerely wanted to publish his comments as they would add to the discussion. He came back to me late yesterday and I’m happy to publish what he has to say below:

Most of what I would have said has been said by other people in the comments. In common with a lot of companies in our sector we maintain two separate blogs:

http://blog.blacknight.com – news, offers, marketing etc.,
http://www.blacknightstatus.com – technical service notifications both from us and from companies that impact on our services eg. domain registries or bandwidth carriers

We have not posted technical information to our main company blog in well over a year. All our technical support staff would direct clients to the status site and it’s also linked to from all pages on our main site and in all outgoing emails from the support desk

The status site is 100% independent from the main Blacknight network etc., and doesn’t even use our DNS servers. Basically as long as we can get online in some way we can get onto it to post updates to our clients.

All updates posted to the status site appear on Twitter as well. See: http://twitter.com/blacknight/status/5709231280 for but one example. You posted a screenshot of our Twitter account to your blog. If you’d gone further down (back) you’d have seen several posts in relation to the issue on morgana from Thursday afternoon.

So there you have it. The word from Blacknight.

I’m doing a lot of reading around how people engage online. The academics would tell us that people tend to engage more quickly and more deeply due to the levels of anonymity; that they feel they can hide behind the anonymity in order to express themselves in ways that they wouldn’t do face to face. I think Twitter is an interesting phenomenon (for many reasons) but mostly because I’m noticing a variety of people who act like it’s anonymous when clearly it’s not. I wonder if Michele would have published his derogatory remarks about me on another online forum – I think not? Obviously Blacknight keep their blog to the superficial PR/marketing level. They wouldn’t blacken it with a personal attack that is unfounded and not proven. But yet he feels that it’s OK to do this on Twitter? Same size audience, same damage done.

What ever happened to the telephone? If I was heading up a company that was in crisis management mode, and a client (ie. me) published a blog about their poor handling of the situation, I would do everything in my power to get my opinion across; to attempt to rectify the situation and to clarify things. If I was unable to publish a comment and the client expressed concern at not receiving my comments, I’d pick up the phone. Or I’d email. Or do something to make myself heard. I wouldn’t go ahead and publish a derogatory remark to an audience of the client’s peers and colleagues.

Maybe that’s just me and how I do business?

Posted in Best Practice, Twitter | 3 Comments

Comments (3 responses)

James Larkin @ November 19th, 2009 at 12:03 am
ok for some reason I’m just thinking kettle and pot instances here

You’re talking about ringing up instead of posting on twitter ? to mention problems and yet you ring a support number and then blog about it all because potentially one staff member ok two in this case don’t know exactly what to say ? there are a number of chains to go through for information … I find its good to chill out (go oh **** mentally) and try to get to the bottom of things.

While the MD is gallivanting around the world

This blog is “Maryrose Lyons blogging since 2003…” so rather similar to twitter in that its a public forum with people who’ll see it and so on.

Now I understand ultimately the Oh **** where is my clients data gone (hence I try to make multiple backups these days) and at the end of the day I hold myself accountable for clients data (hence I mentioned previously I love the guys at BK for saving me from a major **** up on my part) but wouldn’t an email or two to BK management or a phone call to them also help … you’re talking about a PR blog and trying to make it sound like a status information blog (which already exists) …

Whatever about “Michele” posting on twitter about you and the alleged not posting of comments … you also were the first? to post saying “While the MD is gallivanting around the world” gallivanting implying fecking about ? … where as he seems to be networking and is in fact as I see it the public facing PR guy ? I could be wrong but most people know him and not the other guy in the company who is the server dude.

I think your idea of what a blog is … may be slightly flawed … its an outlet … BK seem to have 2 .. the PR / fluff side of things and the Server / uptime / downtime / OMG WTF side of things … which I’m ok with as I said I’ve seen it on the front page … I’m used to similar with other major international hosting companies … Dreamhost (who I’ve had issues with previously) http://blog.dreamhosters.com/ and http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/

Anyways as you said … to close the blacknight matter …

1: I’d be pissed off if I lost all my data
2: I’d be annoyed with my hosting company
3: I’d be checking my terms of service
4: I’d be checking the backup plans I had in place and checking to see what went wrong.
5: I’d be asking myself do other companies **** up and will I get better service / uptime / support from another Irish hosting company (as I’ve said I’m a fan and they’ve helped me out greatly so I know where I’ll be staying)

James
Maryrose Lyons @ November 19th, 2009 at 8:39 am
James, I read your comment first and I thought I was getting a right dressing down. But no, when I read it again (after I’d published it), I realised that you’re just clarifying that which I was looking to clarify before. A couple of points though:

1. A blog and a microblog are two different things. Me posting a summary of what happened to my blog is *not* as public as posting a derogatory comment to Twitter to their 2138 followers. Do you read blogs everyday? Sure look it took you more than 24 hours to come and find this post.

2. Just to clarify *again* if it were my responsiblity to back up my client’s data I would. They have an IT services company who are paid to manage that. I am not. Therefore I have no obligation to check my backup plans or any of the other tips you gave me. For clients who I am responsible for their sites ongoing, they are all safe and securely backedup – not all are on Blacknight.

3. You correctly stated that the blog was a PR blog. The crux of this issue is that I incorrectly classified the blog as a business blog. In fact, I was a fellow finalist in the Best *Business* Blog category at this year’s Irish Blog Awards and lost out to the Blacknight. At least now I know what it is and what it isn’t. And it isn’t a business blog if it’s only used for PR purposes. I take it you agree with me on that?

Anyway, the issue has been resolved. There are other issues this week with non deliverability of email on one of the other Blacknight servers. And the wiki home page is inaccessible due to spammers. God, you’ve got to hand it to Michele, the “public facing PR guy” as you call him…all these problems with the service and still people are almost zenlike in their adoration.

I think that’s the real point: while I might be pissed off with Blacknight, they are the best of a bad bunch. And I use best in a relative sense. Until someone sets up a hosting service in GMT that uses linux and offers great customer service, I’m sticking with them.
James Larkin @ November 19th, 2009 at 9:23 am
1: Yep I read blogs everyday I also use a service to track all the blogs I read so really I find them quite similar I dip in and out of things I follow 500 ish people on Twitter I have a select few I follow all the time and for the rest its a case of interaction and dipping in and out of the information. It took me 24 hours to respond as I wrote a quite detailed comment however I had read the post previously

2: New service to offer the clients ? I recently brought it up with a client who went oh yeah that’d be good if you backed up stuff for us regularily.

3: I’m failing to really see the issue here they have 2 blogs … one for service updates and one for PR / one for service issues (both being linked to I think from either other maybe it could be made more obvious however for people) ?

And hopefully on a final note …

I’m a fan of blacknights and the service they offer. I’m a fan of the way they do business and the level of interaction I get. I like the fact they are on twitter / facebook and so on and they run their fun and silly little competitions. I do also have issues with certain things and well I’ve fired on emails to the management and they’ve responded on some things .. other things are out of their control right now but they are working on them so its nice to know as a minor customer with a few plans and domains with them that they listen.

I’ve had dealings with a lot of hosting companies both Irish and foreign and yes I think its a testament to Blacknight that they’ve got customers like me who’ll stick up for them and you’ll find it on a lot of forums.