BlackBerry users can breathe a sigh of relief: The four-day service disruption spanning four continents is finally over, according to the official Twitter stream of Research In Motion, the smartphone maker and service operator.
But the 72-plus-hour outage may have lasting consequences, if reactions from frustrated BlackBerry users are any indication.
And the timing couldn’t be worse: BlackBerry’s nemesis, Apple’s iPhone, sees its latest smartphone, the 4S, go on sale tomorrow.
Those unable to access email or send messages tweeted about switching service providers. “Dear BlackBerry”—usually the preface to a sarcastic complaint—even trended on Twitter. Someone registered isblackberrystillbroken.com as a way of quickly signaling the service’s status.
Others were just tired of hearing about it on Twitter, like Chloé Reay, who tweeted, “All these Blackberry jokes are annoying me now.”
Indeed, it seemed like every tech blog, from Mashable to UK’s “Stuff Men Like,” had a funny BlackBerry tweet collection.
All jokes aside, the server outage, caused by a core switch failure, proved to be an exercise in public relations that Research In Motion, the maker of BlackBerry, was not prepared for. In the first couple of days of the outage, much of the anti-RIM rage had to do with how silent the company was regarding the problem.
The lack of official information paved the way for speculation and hand-wringing. Even pubescent YouTubers and non-BlackBerry users weighed in on the outage with videos.
Today, RIM co-CEO and cofounder Mike Lazaridis apologized to his customers via video uploaded to the BlackBerry YouTube channel.
The apology seemed sincere—he admitted BlackBerry did not deliver on its goal of providing “reliable” real-time communications and said “we let many of you down”—but was it too little, too late?
YouTubers’ reaction? “EPIC FAIL,” said one commenter. sjsawyer wrote:
“He should have just said ‘We f—ed up and ended the video.. then it would have been funny instead of extremely awkward…”
Many YouTubers, like BlackBerry users on Twitter, mentioned they would be switching over to the Android or the iPhone.
Others weren’t so harsh, like caomegen who wrote “at least he apologized” or xoelisabeth who commented “aww i forgive u :).”
According to an unofficial poll by KTLA Los Angeles, just under half of BlackBerry users affected by the disruption said they’d switch phones.
A poll on CrackBerry.com had less damning results, with just under a third of BlackBerry users polled saying they’d switch phones.
Photo by peyri
