When you get cut off

Seth Godin has an object lesson in managing an issue.

When web sites don't work, its your organisation that is cut off from the world and not the world cut off from you. The world goes somewhere else.

This then is an issue for people who are responsible for relationships - its a PR issue.

Back to Seth:

It's easy to riff and agitate and brainstorm about the marketing message, about authenticity, about treating people the way you want to be treated... but if your building burns down, it doesn't really matter so much.

Amazon's shopping cart has been broken, off and on, for days now. I can't find a status blog for them, so it might just be me and a few colleagues, or it might be everyone in the world.

That's like every single Walmart in the country unable to open their doors because the locks are jammed. Suddenly, having good locksmiths on staff is really important.

As the bar keeps getting raised for what people expect from an online experience, the collection of things that you MUST get right keeps going up. It's expensive, but so is rent. It's part of the deal.