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日本語Zooomr, The Little Photo Sharing Site That Could…
by Thomas Hawk | 29 May 2007 | Announcements | 66 Comments
[UPDATE @ 2:41am] Hey Friends, I’ve been here for about 2 hours or so now — the database box is completely done-for. Luckily, we do keep database snapshots/backups! We will come out of this stronger than before, together — Zooomr is the world’s photosharing website. — kristopher
When I was 5 years old I climbed Mount Whitney, the highest mountain in the Continental US, elevation 14,495. I went with my dad. It was just he and I. It was a pretty incredible and unlikely thing for a 5 year old and his dad to attempt. The night before we made the attempt at the peak we camped out at a lake at the base of something called the 99 switchbacks. When we started out in the morning I was fresh and ready to go. But after about 50 switchbacks I was done. The air was thin and I was tired and it was then and there that I first heard the story about the little engine that could. My dad was a great story teller and somehow he told the story of the little engine that could with enough conviction that it got me to the top.
I think I can, I think can, I think I can… I know I can, I know I can, I know I can…
And so what seemed like certain failure in the end turned out to be success. And my dad and I celebrated at the top of the summit and I got a little patch that I showed to all my friends back in kindergarten when I got home.
And that’s where Zooomr is tonight. We are the little engine that could.
About an hour ago we finally launched Zooomr Mark III. It was a glorious 10 minute stretch of time. People had stayed up all night with us after a week of anticipation and everything was going great. Our first photos were being uploaded. People were writing exciting updates on the Zipline and then our database crashed.
It was a pretty painful moment. And then Kristopher turned to me and said, you know what, we’ll get this thing back up. This will work. We are the little engine that could.
I don”t have my car (it’s back in the East Bay) but one of our users who stayed up with us online offered to drive Kristopher down to the data center in Sunnyvale. I’m sitting in a BART station right now typing this waiting for the last train of the night to the East Bay.
Kristopher should be able to get our database back up from Sunnyvale but I don’t know how long this might take or what we need to do to make it stable enough that it doesn’t go down again. Zooomr Mark III is done and out, but we just need to make sure our systems can handle the traffic. I’m going to try and hook back in with him in the morning, but regrettably, after a brief 10 minutes of fun with everyone we are back offline.
Thanks to everyone who has continued hanging in here with us. I know it’s frustrating not to be able to have access to your photos. But we’re not giving up yet and we are going to fight like hell to get Zooomr Mark III back up and fully stable.
I’ll update more when I know more.
Best of luck to zooomr!
I saw Mark III. It was awesome. And, a few minutes after seeing Mark III and trying to make my first Zipline update, MY hosting account was suspended, as it was getting Dugg
Zooomr, the photosharing site that could. Rock on people!
Beautiful Post, Thomas.
You all have been great to be around the past week! For the 10 minutes I was able to use Mark III, I swear I was in heaven. I am extremely saddened by the database crash, but I know we’ll make it through this better than before!
Best of luck,
Jason Fouchard (homestar14)
Thanks for the update, Thomas. It was fun, wasn’t it.
We are here with you, friends…
Haven’t you TESTED everything BEFORE making the upgrade? I know being a one-man-responsible for such a project is a lot of work, but think for a moment. Before any radical changes you should:
- try the upgrade on a COPY of Zooomr service, not the production server
- functionality tests, load tests
- did I mention tests?
- after you figure out every trick in the migration process and are sure things will work: upgrade the real server
Sorry guys, this is all cool, but with every minute off-line you loose (potential and real?) users.
I hope Mark III is worth waiting for but I can clearly see that things are not managerd properly. Coolness alone is not enough.
BTW: do you have a failover server? Or a hot-backup? Redundancy? Flickr stores photos at 3 different places, including off-datacenter location in case of any terrible disaster.
regards - Tom
Haven’t you TESTED everything BEFORE making the upgrade? I know being a one-man-responsible for such a project is a lot of work, but think for a moment. Before any radical changes you should:
- try the upgrade on a COPY of Zooomr service, not the production server
- functionality tests, load tests
- did I mention tests?
- after you figure out every trick in the migration process and are sure things will work: upgrade the real server
Sorry guys, this is all cool, but with every minute off-line you loose (potential and real?) users.
I hope Mark III is worth waiting for but I can clearly see that things are not managed properly. Coolness alone is not enough.
BTW: do you have a failover server? Or a hot-backup? Redundancy? Flickr stores photos at 3 different places, including off-datacenter location in case of any terrible disaster.
regards - Tom
Tom, would you put your mon€¥ where your mouth (or fingers) are and buy them a “failover server”?
Thomas!
Beautiful Post, Thomas!
I was there… I saw it,.. and it was GREAT!!
Thanks for all your hard work, both of you!
Can’t say much, except “good luck!”.
Hopefully Scoble’s funding plug translates into results. I have a feeling Sun is going to jump on this opportunity. We’ll see.
it is great, i think, for i just saw the tail of the great 10 mins, it turned to be the tv page when i try to login. anyway, it gives out hopes, many hopes. keep going, bravo guys.
Hasan: I believe Zooomr is a commercial project, owned by Zooomr Inc. There is no such thing “buy them”.
But if you asked: “Would you invest in the project” I would say “Yes. Because it has enormous potential”.
Another option is to find a sponsor for the high-availability feature but this is getting harder and harder nowadays.
But guys, be serious: find investors, tell them about your potential, grab some $$$, hire a few people and turn Zooomr into a successful business.
You can get a significant discount at Sun for hardware, they have great solutions that you could use.
Consider
* a X4500 for file storage (with RAID6 or 10?)
* 2 x X4200 as redundant database servers
* X4100 or X2200 as your load-balanced and redundant application servers
* one cheaper server with lots of cheaper storage as continous backup
Calculate how much money you would need for it. It should be
It’s funny, I have been paying attention to the uStream and IRC chat and although I really never used zooomr all that much, I think I actually gained more appreciation for it during this downtime than I probably would of if i decided to stop by a few weeks later to see the new features. You guys have a good, strong, die hard community, something most companies would kill for and something I tend to value more than the actual product. Which, for the 10 minutes I got to poke around, is definitely something worthy of it’s awesome community.
I have to say, I was very very impressed with the new Mark III.
Keep up the good work guys, and good luck with the database servers. I hope to be using zooomr much more in the future.
good to see you are taking it on the chin and pressing on…i can only imagine how gutted you two must have felt when it crashed after finally launching M3 with so much blood, sweat and tears. you’ve got the right attitude, so you’ll get there soon enough.
almost there, keep it up guys.
Recall the following two posts:-
Matt Mullenweg: http://photomatt.net/2007/01/18/relevant-sun/
Jonathan Schwartz: http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/good_bad_and_brave
This is a golden opportunity for Sun to make a solid comeback. Jon clearly has a soft spot for start-ups, and given his impressive and uncanny calculated risk-seeking tendencies, I’m betting that he’s gonna give this a go. Sun wants to differentiate itself - it wants to prove the quality of its products. Zooomr already receives substantial attention from the blogosphere following coverage by TC and prolific writers like Scoble. Aside from the obvious branding opportunity, it’s hard to deny that Zooomr done right can result in a tidy buy-out profit, if and when an acquisition eventually happens. Kris has a few ingenious ideas such as Zipline and the Marketplace which are neat pull factors for members of the photo-sharing community. Cool features, entrepreneurship and an ambitious vision are a critical mix for success. The only missing ingredient in the cauldron is corporate funding.
Sun, don’t make the same mistake twice. Do it, and do it fast.
@TomZ:
I’m sure they wouldn’t object to you funding them. So, open your checkbook and put your money where your mouth is, instad of whinging about how they could do better.
… and on other note, I reckon you should change the tagline:-
“Zooomr, the little photo sharing site that can.”
GoGoGO!
Keep at it guys, Zooomr *is* going to rock the photosharing world.
Having been in similar situations in the past, I know what you are going through. Keeping everything crossed and send positive vibes from this side of the pond.
- Neil.
Loved Mark 3.
Love Zooomr.
We’ll get it on when everything is back on.
-McBLG
May the force be with you. I fly up to Microsoft tomorrow… anyways. good luck!
keep going, you’ll get there
Thomas and Kristopher, thank you for your great effort.
As a software vendor, I can really imagine and understand what you have feeled when the DB is crashed.
Hang on, with 2 man (1 tech person), you done the best. I hope you recover it back and make Zooomr to upper level.
But if somehow restoring M3 not works consider to rollback to M2 and open M3 sandbox for load tests to your selected beta users. Users will understand that and continue to support you as always been.
Good luck and the best wishes.
Congratulations on the M3 launch.
I’m confident that you’ll sort out all the quirks and problems as you have in the past.
Can’t wait to try it when it comes back online.
Kris,Thomas!
I’m always with you guys!
Respect.
good luck guys
maybe you could considered a couple of days of scaling in users?
http://blogs.smugmug.com/don
Read this blog if you want to learn how SmugMug handles the servers/storage. A vary cool blog.
Tom
No matter how great Mark III will be, I could never trust these guys anymore for hosting a single byte of my data. This is a complete DI-SAS-TER. Announced things that never happen since 3 or 4 months now ; filming their glorious debacle while their users are left in s*it instead of quietly performing the upgrade and showing it once it’s done ; not even apologizing for the inconvenience (just “we want it 10x more than you, so shut up”) ; and now the database “crashed”… Yeah, right. Come on.
Promising the moon is nice but the No. 1 feature is that the service does what it is designed for - that is, sharing pictures. And I cannot trust Zooomr for that anymore. Too many false promises. Too much outage.
I just invested 25$ in a Flickr pro account and I feel like it’s the best investment I could have done. At least my pictures will be back online on my sites, after I change all links of course. :/ Fortunately, Mark II copied Flickr so well that it’s easy to find your marks there.
Flame me if you want, but if it is not legitimate to be unhappy about this, what is?
Don’t get me wrong - I secretly hope my points are wrong and Zooomr will succeed. But I just don’t believe it anymore. For that would start by admitting all the bullshit that launching is, and I doubt our two friends are capable of that.
Wow. That was such a cool website for the 10 minutes that it was up (I thought it was 20 but that’s irrelevant at the moment). I enjoyed the new features I saw and welcome the time when I can come back and browse and discover all the other features. Zipline was great, Discovery was awesome and Groups was out of this world. You guys rock and I’ll be investing my photos in the future to your site!
Keep on chucking ahead and we’ll be at the promised place tomorrow.
i think i value my investment with Zooomr much more than my $25 Flickr account. i am glad that so many people are supportive of this effort. i put a lot into my photography but not as much as Kris puts into his work. i respect someone who works so hard. i think that the people who are bashing these efforts are missing something besides photos they are missing a truly unique opportunity to belong to a community that allows friendly access to the people who run the show. as far as i remember Zooomr has been as reliable in terms of storage and sharing as flickr has. i have over 1,000 images stored there now and will be uploading hundreds more as soon as i can. i’m not doubting, or troubled, or concerned, or nervous, or frightened, or angry. i’m just waiting to use a service that a friend of mine named Kristopher Tate has been working on for a while and almost has finished. when he does finish, i think i’m going to go to SF and buy him and my other friend Thomas Hawk a drink to celebrate, and then we’ll go take some pictures.
Hi guys.. we’re all getting a but serious about this. I’ll wait for Zooomr - some wont, but that’s there loss.. There are enough people who love zooomr (and KT + TH) that it will be great, regardless of those people who jump ship in the rough sees… I like stories about little engines, its great to see how hard things are sometimes…
Off to finish my degree now, see you guys in M3
say what you want about gnurou’s comment, but one thing worth repeating is that there hasn’t been a single apology or even admitting any error. I find that a little troubling. and good luck getting it back up.
This is slightly worrying.
I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability!
I liked Zooomr as it is/was a lot already. Not one to get all spastic about hype and all but do look forward to Mark III when it will finally come about. For now, I’ll hang in there for as long as you guys do
Thank u guys for providing the great photo sharing service, hope the problem will be fixed soon and TAKE CARE!
All the verry veryy best Kristopher! I appreciate and admire your attitude and hardwork! Cheers!
~T.
Dude, I’m disappointed so I can only begin to imagine how you feel.
I will be here for as long as it takes. Zooomr has the potential to really change the way people share and use their photos and I’m still as excited about that now as I was when I first discovered Zooomr.
I know that the place you’re in at the moment must be a pretty dark one, but I hope that between us, we can all shine a little bit of light in there. We’ve all been there one way or another at different times in our lives, but most of us didn’t have the expectations of Teh Intarnets to cope with as well.
Stay strong, Zooomr MkIII will happen. Ignore the naysayers. If you actually count up the negative and positive posts you’ve received over the last week or so, I think you’re well in credit.
Don’t forget to take a break and look after yourself a bit too.
Just saw the 2:41 AM video update on this post.
Mixed feelings : love the garage/college project spirit and attitude, but in view of the commercial ambition can’t refrain thinking of it as very bad management - what’s the CEO to do now?
Bad luck, but you can’t count on it to run a business.
Still, cheers!
Those 10 minutes were just enough for us to appreciate Mark III.
Little engine will become big, big, BIG, …
Good luck, we are with you.
Argh! I missed the 10 minutes, I checked in the morning and it wasn’t released yet and now I come back from college (I had an exam today, or else I might have skipped going) and I see people have used Mark II and I have not.
Oh well, still hoping and praying I’ll be using it sooner than I expect.
Too bad I didn’t catch Mark III. But I would still stick with Zooomr.
I missed the launch and the uptime by only a few minutes because I slept in. Hearing what everyone’s been saying, how good it is etc, I’m supremely jealous now.
All I can do now is wish you guys luck. We’re trying (on the IRC chat) to get people to dontate on the zooomr.com page. Hopefully in the morning there will be enough to get things patched up slightly. We need the sandbox up at least so you can demonstrate this software to potential investors.
Thanks for all your hard work.
Feel sad T_T about the crash… I missed MkIII 10min fame, hope u guys can get it back online keep going. Thanks for the Hard Work.
I definately want to upload my photos on Zooomr when it gets backup
We know that the Zooomr team (Kris and Tom) can. And we wait the necesary time.
Better slow but surely, no problem.
Who loves the photography has patience, we knows to hope; art and science.
Love and kisses
Your friend, Faby
It would be good to know what needs to be done now to get things up and running. Is the hardware foobared, or is it a software issue? Do you need donations, a new box, headache tablets?
Does this completely destroy your ETA? Will MK II come back in the meantime?
Shame that I missed the 10 minutes but you know what they say; if you haven’t had it, you can’t miss it.
Good luck folks! I have my fingers and toes crossed for you.
Crashing RAIDs suck. Been there, done that. I’m sorry this has happened.
While I missed the window it was up, I have seen the demo and I have no doubt that it is very cool.
Stick with it, Kristopher and Thomas. Many of us will still be here with you when you get back up and going.
The last week has been a wild ride! I’ve enjoyed the ustream experience and chatting with fellow Zooomr fans. Stick with it, guys! We appreciate you and your hard work.
Anybody know how much this new hardware these guys need is to buy?. The £ is strong at the moment - perhaps a few british users could donate 1:2!
On the financing side, seriously, how much would it be to invest in a share of the company?
Yeah lets talk about real Web 2.0 - real people investing.
Not big corporations taking over but la plebe becoming stakeholders.
I would like to invest as well.
Kris, Thomas,
I’m working for Sun and did send a mail to Jonathan Schwartz and he replied to look into it in terms of donating some new hardware for you guys.
No promises, of course!
it’s a shame the system failed, but hey it was the system! we are still here with/for ya. stay strong!
I’m sad for you guys.
Please know that most of us are committed to see Zooomr succeed. I know I am.
I’m not letting this get me down. I’m going out shooting tomorrow night with RandyMan to shoot the full moon.
Great news Roman
Bad luck guys, hope you get it working soon. I hope you guys get the funding that you deserve and need soon as I do worry about periods of downtime like this and whether it will deter people from using the site.
I for one will stick with it as when it does work its amazing.
Kris and Thomas- I salute you both in your forward thinking, positive view of what for some would be absolutely crushing.
Kris, at your age, I am inspired by your talent, maturity, focus and commitment. Know that you are supported and the least I can do is offer my support by promoting your site and work within my circle of friends. Watching this process live, it’s ups and downs, its successes and setbacks is a true life lesson that you are sharing with us. Thank you again and hang in there!
Great post Thomas!
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
in some senses, if you did a proper investment plan, and offered some users to invest in a structured format that offered reasonably parity amongst investors (perhaps a min or max stake, or single stakes) then people would be more inclined to chip in, because with a decent pool of capital the chances of success are greater. i.e., if people knew others were going to invest, and that there were numerous investors, then a certain confidence in numbers feeling might take hold and allow cautious investors to feel more secure. obviously it needs serious thought and planning…people need to know how things are spent and what contingencies, securities, risks there are…but i guess you guys have probably taken this beast as far as you can by yourselves…..i’m sure you will find a lot of people willing to approach.
Dude! I sent you $20, what MORE do you need?
It’s gotta be tough to climb all the way up to the peak only to have it yanked out from under you. I sympathize.
I like Zooomr. It’s got more whizzybang features already than I can think of any reason for me to use personally, but the ones I do use suit me quite well. I want you to succeed. But I’m worried that y’all are just trying to do too much with too little. You really need to find a way to create more resources for yourselves.
It’s impressive that you’re a two-man operation, but not in a good way necessarily. I worry about Kristopher a bit. He’s young and brilliant and apparently has superhuman stamina, but burning the candle this hard from both ends…well even if you can handle it *now*, it’s a good way to make yourself physically old before your time.
And if Kris were to get run down crossing the street or incapacitated some other way, Zooomr would be as good as dead right there.
I’m rooting for you, I really am, and hoping and looking forward to seeing what kind of new things Zooomr can do in Mark III. Y’all continue to amaze me with what you’ve already accomplished and what you seem to be capable of; I just hope you can find a way, very soon, to get a few more baskets to put all your eggs in.
Good luck!
It’s been a long week and there was excitement and sadness when Zooomr Mark III finally went live last night. I know this is a minor setback and Zooomr will live again soon.
I made a donation and I hope others who believe in Zooomr do the same.
Good luck Kris and Thomas and thanks for all your hard work.
Kris, Thomas,
I really love Zooomr and want to support you to build the greatest photo sharing site world wide! I posted an article about zooomr on my blog and sent you $20, hope it will help you getting zooomr back online.
Kris and Thomas: Sorry this happened.
I’m still just in awe that you’ve accomplished so much with so few people. Sometimes people tend to forget that Zooomr isn’t a building full of people programming full time.
I have confidence that you’ll get past this setback. Hang in there.
Calling all “Zooomr Troopers” (at least the one hundred solid I saw all week)- It’s obviously time to put on the armor and defend what we love and believe in. Zooomr Land
Zooomr isn’t “only” a photosharing site now - Because of this downtime, It’s become a full fledge interactive community.
Let’s rally up and put or wallets where our hearts are. If 100 of us donated 50 - 100 dollars (It’s the price of an OK night out), that’s 5m - 10m / That would help them considerably..
Talk is cheap - These guys are the real thing - Management of our expectations are their only downfall. “They will learn from this and be a great company”
Much love to Kris and Thomas - Now let’s fight a good fight and finish this race..
RandyMan you need to check your multiplication! 100 x 100 = 10,000 not 10,000,000. Mind you, 10k would buy a lot of hardware.
Zooomr - the little train that could
Recently I have had more than a few conversations with Kris over at Zooomr and even met the famous although slightly secretive Thomas Hawk. Great guys truely. I love their product, I like where they are going, and mostly I wish them great great succe…
[…] are links to the posts talking about this at the Zooomr Blog, Thomas Hawk, Zooomr Hits and Robert Scoble. And here’s the video that Kris recorded in the […]