Ma.gnolia’s Bad Day
It’s been hard to know when or what to write on the story of Ma.gnolia’s collapse. Although the database corruption manifested itself quite suddenly (Larry, Ma.gnolia’s founder, was actually visiting here in Vancouver at the time) but the full scenario unfolded over the course of a couple weeks. It took that time to get some recovery tools in place, and especially to find out if drive recovery experts could, well, recover the database.
Today the word came back that the drive held no recoverable data, and Larry updated the homepage to break the news. This came a few days after he and Chris Messina used the forum of their Citizen Garden podcast to share more details about the technical aspects behind the breakdown, and the prospects for Ma.gnolia’s future.
It’s troubling to see something I’ve played a part in slip away into the unforgiving ether, or as Chris called it, ’where data goes when it dies.’ But it’s worse to see a friend go through something so harsh, having known how hard Larry worked building the service. As the product manager for most of the service’s life, I feel responsible for not having pushed for comprehensive recovery plans. In the hurly burly of daily operations, and the designing space I occupied on the M2 project for the last months of my time with Ma.gnolia, these things fall out of view, but it boils down to riding on unchecked assumptions.
Community Responses
While private reflections and conversations had tough moments, the strongest emotions came through in the reactions, which cover the full range. On Twitter, reactions boiled down to expressions of surprise from many, support from many, and some snarky comments in there as well, especially immediately after the news broke. In blogs, thoughtfulness and forgiving tones won the day, which says something about the dynamic between the tools we use to create content, and the tone of content we create with a given tool.
The roughest ride came at Get Satisfaction, where Ma.gnolia had an established support space for well over a year. There, two hell-bent griefers repeatedly put the spotlight on Larry and tried to rile readers into an online-pillorying, at times in rather personal terms. Being upset and expressing it is human; piling on with post after post is griefing. While that negativity took a great deal of attention and energy out of the thread, it ended up being in the minority, and scores of people chimed in to express understanding, support and offers of help. In short, the majority of people responding were people at their best.
Community managers should take note of how Larry handled the activity at Get Satisfaction. By opening up on the subject in a third-party forum, he took criticism on the chin. With griefers, Larry acknowledged their anger, but refused to engage as they dug further into attack mode, and didn’t move to have their posts removed. These aren’t easy things to do, but I believe strongly in this approach, because it gives negativity room to spin itself out and for others to see that the target is able to hear that criticism without being consumed by it.
Anti-Cloud: 1; Pro-Cloud: .75
Today, Larry heard back that the database cannot be recovered from the corrupted hard-drive by any means. Though this was known to be a long-shot, it’s still sad news. Almost immediately after the service went offline, some commented that the event would sober enthusiasm for cloud computing, where we leave our data on any number of web services rather than a single computer or network.
There’s no clear winner in that argument. It’s true that many bookmarks were lost for members without backups in mirroring to another service or doing manual exports. But Larry was also able to assemble, with help from some community members, tools that pull bookmarks from the caches of search engines and other services where members had syndicated their Ma.gnolia bookmarks. I was able to recover about 75% of my own bookmarks, showing that the cloud itself can be more resilient than any one service. The cloud that taketh away, can also give back, though at a price. The web keeps showing that the whole is more than any assembly of individual players, and it’s kind of appropriate as that was truly the case with Ma.gnolia’s community.
Through links, people had found others of like interest and heart, and shared that with the world as part of who they are. It was never one person I liked more than others there, but the collection of people I knew that made it worthwhile. That’s not a small thing, but it is something that can be rebuilt, even from scratch.
Larry does say in the podcast that he has his eye on rebuilding the service in a few months, albeit with some substantial twists, including a private or invitation-only member acquisition model. Should that happen, I’d bring my links back in a heartbeat. After all, magnolias bloom every spring.
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the events of the past two weeks. It has not been an easy two weeks, but as you point out as well, the community reaction has really affirmed my faith in humanity.
A few months ago, someone asked me what Ma.gnolia “traded in.” My immediate response was “relationships.” Of course, I am in no way saying that people’s bookmarks aren’t valuable or that their loss is unimportant. With the number of members who have just been asking for the community and the site to come back, I think it shows how sharing information can connect people and build up relationships which may outlast individual instances.
IF relationships and “the whole” are truly the value of the service, what is the reasoning behind making it “private or invitation-only”?
Great overview. I think the take away for other online services is to focus on transparency and building these “trust” relationships from the start, and especially during the bad times. Every service has hiccups, some more severe then others. Most often this applies to downtime events. It’s too easy to just hide and avoid opening up. This is a great case study for others to learn from.
@Emily: I think social groupings can thrive even if they’re not universally accessible. Larry says in the video that he’s planning to invite all members of the previous Ma.gnolia to come into a rebuilt service, so from the start the same relationships that were there can be re-made.
The idea behind making it invite-only is to give those members the ability to bring in other people they know and growing the community through those channels.
This extends some of what Ma.gnolia did with identity, which was to require new members to join with an identity established elsewhere through OpenID or Facebook, and the 10 or so people for whom Windows Live login actually works. With an invite-only model, Ma.gnolia goes further by requiring a relationship with someone already in the community. That new model would definitely reduce the amount of spamming that consumed enormous technical and human resource hours when the service was wide open.
It’s a good question, and might be worth its own blog post, though I don’t want to speak for Larry’s plans before he has a chance to make them
Excellent post, you managed to to get over the facts while remaining balanced and sensitive to both Larry and users situations…not an easy feat.
I haven’t followed the discussion on get satisfied, but think maybe i should take a look and offer my support.
I don’t know Larry personally, but we have traded a few emails over the last year or so and he always went out of his way to give me great help and advice. I guess part of what made Magnolia so loved was that it was the community that built up around it, and i’m sure the community will really want to help to rebuild magnolia when the time comes.
This has been a difficult time not only for Larry and ma.gnolia, but also the user. Most of my book marks were Ok (as i had a recent back up) but i have been reluctant to start using another service in the hopes of getting ma.gnolia up agian.
I’m not sure why you think “snarky” was not an appropriate response, while loving, caring, understanding responses were. He *lost our data*.
I think being upset is understandable, and someone just saying they’re upset isn’t what I come down against.
What I say with regards to snarky is:
“On Twitter, reactions boiled down to expressions of surprise from many, support from many, and some snarky comments in there as well, especially immediately after the news broke.”
And what I think crosses the line:
“Being upset and expressing it is human; piling on with post after post is griefing.”
It’s not that I think some snark isn’t understandable, but campaigns of highly personal criticism of the kind that happened GS are unfair.
No Joe, you lost your data. Larry is not responcible for your lack of a backup plan. Cloud computing is no different than using local storage, back-up or face the consequences. It seems the people who were the most “snarky” were those that believe they are owed something for nothing & who do not take personal responcability. Sorry if that is harsh but it’s something I have seen time and again.
I had never heard of Magnolia. I was on my new (and wonderful) browser, FLOCK, looking for an online way of bookmarking when I stumbled across Delicious and Magnolia. I suppose the name and the cute flower logo were the reasons I seemed drawn to Magnolia, after all, I am a woman. I was saddened to see that before I even began with the site, it had ended. I then read about what happened. How awful and sad. IT gave me shivers. Imagine how this man and anyone involved feels! I am sure it was not intentional. Mistakes are just that, mistakes. We all make them and learn from them and there is a reason for everything. Maybe I am just a compassionate person and maybe since I had not even entered any data is the reason I am being so understanding. I have no idea what the people are feeling who lost data. I would imagine angry, upset and just not feeling ok with this. Everyone has to take a step back and look at both sides. Getting personal though is not acceptable! It is immature and just NOT necessary! Maybe Magnolia is going to come back better than ever. I hope it does. I know I am going to use it. We are human, we all make mistakes. To Err Is Human, To Forgive Divine ( when people do things wrong we should try hard to forgive them because all people make mistakes … ) I have had my say, now back to work. I am with you Larry. When Magnolia comes back up, I’m there. Regards, chrissy
Any news from Larry? It’s been a few months since the crash: when will see “Ma.gnolia Strikes Back” ?
The last word I had on that was end of summer, so there might be another month or two to wait yet. I’ll let Larry know you were asking.
When can we expect magnolia’s return probably in a new look ?
Ma.gnolia with my own use limited at best as I was fairly new at the time of this mishap how will I gain access once your back online?
I hope Magnolia is going to come back soon.
I’m sure people will help to rebuild magnolia as it was a special community.
I am sad to hear that the service came to an end. It was great fun to use. So easy and slick.
Good luck with any future projects you guys undertake.
All the very best, Glen
I am anxious to use Magnolia, and hope someone invites me when it’s up and running again!
Good Luck, Larry!
Monica
I hadn’t realised till now that ma.gnolia was down, as I only used it occasionally. Thanks for the detailed post on what happened. Good luck with the projects you do in the future.
Good luck with the site Larry; from personal experience it seems being brought down and struggling to get back up can develop some great qualities that wouldn’t have been found without it.
All the best!