Tumblr is going on its 15th hour of downtime (that I’ve noticed). In an effort to let everyone know what is going on they’ve only sent 1 tweet about it. No emails. Nothing on the "downtime" page.
On Twitter they only have 40,000 followers and as far as I know they have millions of users. So obviously most of their community has no idea what is going on.
As someone who has been in this type of situation with Viddler (though our longest period of downtime has only been a few hours in 5 years) I can sympathize with the amount of effort that is going on behind the scenes by their entire team. However, let this be a lesson for the rest of us in what not to do.
Update: And just like that they’ve sent out a second tweet. With their own Tumblr-powered blog being down I suppose their options were limited in how they can communicate with their community.
Update again: Tumblr has now published a post-mordem report on what happened, how they’re dealing with it, and how they hope it doesn’t happen again. No new information though the words do seem sincere.
I’m sure Tumblr, and everyone that was watching this all happen, learned a lot of lessons during this event.