Web services thrive, but outages outrage users

Look, services crash. And most of them do are often times being offered as free. Granted, this is really irritating to be sure. But we need to remember that these things happen…

Web sites that share blogs, bookmarks and photos exploded in popularity in 2005, but in recent weeks a number of major outages left users stranded and frustrated.

The new breed of Web site includes blogging services such as TypePad, the photo site Flickr, the shared bookmark site del.icio.us and many others. They are sometimes known collectively as “Web 2.0″: hosted online, relying heavily on users’ submissions, and frequently updated and tweaked by their owners.

Their growth in the last year has been huge. Flickr and del.icio.us were high-profile acquisitions for Internet giant Yahoo, and there are now at least 20 million blogs in existence, according to some estimates, with tens of thousands being added every day. [Read the rest]