When Kickstarter Goes Down, Communication Is Often Lacking

When speaking of Internet giants, the Kickstarter website has definitely grown to be among them. And like other Internet giants, Kickstarter has proven that even the greatest of the great can fall and succumb to downtime. A crowdfunding platform, the site offers a way for people to generate crowdfunding for projects and ventures. However, while the site may do a wonderful job of helping people raise capital, it isn’t as adept at updating the public when things go wrong with the website.

The February 25th Outage

When the Kickstarter website went down for over 2 hours on February 25th, many people thought it had something to do with the influx of traffic driven to the site due to a very popular campaign that was running on the Kickstarter platform at the time. Kickstarter, however, denies that it was an influx of traffic that caused the site to go down for hours on Wednesday. What did cause the outage? Apparently the company doesn’t know yet. Whether or not they will ever inform the public of what actually caused the outage is also unclear, which is what has some people insisting that it was indeed the traffic influx that brought the site down for an extended period of time.

Communication Prevents Speculation

With no real answers as to what caused the Kickstarter outage, the media and public are making their own speculations, with some even saying it was indeed traffic and Kickstarter just doesn’t want to admit to not having enough bandwidth to handle the traffic that the site received. While this may or may not be the case, without real answers from anyone representing the company, no one can say for sure. Unfortunately a lack of communication can cause a loss of public confidence when situations such as these arise. If your site goes down, there are a few rules that you need to follow when it comes to communicating with the public about the outage.

Transparency is Key

First and foremost, remain transparent. If a traffic overload was the culprit, fess up and explain what you are doing to prevent the situation from happening again in the future. If someone tripped on a wire and unplugged the server, then explain it. The public appreciates honesty in a world that seems to be lacking it more and more.

Keep the Public Updated

If you really don’t know what caused an outage, then be upfront about it. Explain that the outage reason has not yet been determined but promise to update the public when you do determine the reason for it (and be sure to keep that promise) so that the public doesn’t feel as though they are being kept in the dark. In a day and age where extended downtime is becoming less and less acceptable, when it happens it is crucial that your company be very transparent about the issue if it does occur. Only then will you be able to assure the public that you take downtime seriously and, just as important, you take updating the public regarding downtime issues seriously as well.