Mitvit Shares Finnish Weblogging Community Frustration
10 Hour
23 Minute
AM
I got a message from Mitvit this morning. He's a Finnish weblogger and a person who is very unhappy with the way that I handled the Qlogger upgrade process. He makes a lot of excellent points. I sent him a quick note and he agreed to let me post his message on the site. I've got a lot of work to do to make things right with the Finnish weblogging community. No time to log... gotta get to work.
-----Original Message----- From: mit vit [mailto:email removed] Sent: Friday, February 20, 2004 9:26 AM To: joe@joereger.com Subject: customer rant
Dear Mr. Reger
I am rather astonished by the fact that you haven't received more feedback regarding your not-so-well- informed "update" process on qlogger-system.
Having read the terms of service, I totally agree with the fact that since you run a free service, you are allowed to make changes to your system/terms any time without prior notice. What I think about your latest adventures is a whole another story.
My account has been down almost 48 hours. This would not bother me at all, if I had been informed beforehand, or if you would have been kind enough to put at least a tiny notification on your company main page. But no, you just decided to click the switch.
Also I've been told (here I am relying on rumours only due to lack of proper information) that you've put up a 2000 visitors/month traffic-limit. Being a member of small but very active community of Finnish webloggers and running a blog on the popular side of the street, I have to say that this limitation is, excuse my french, ridiculous. I understand that your purpose is to gently guide us towards Pro version of Qlogger, but I have a strong feeling that your strategy is not going to pay off.
Recently the finnish community of webloggers have been increasingly changing their platform to Qlogger. One could almost say, that it has been quite a "hit" amongst us. Well, those days seem to be over. Lot of rats have left the sinking ship and rescued themselves back to Blogger. And quite a stir you've created, I might add. Oh i wish you'd speak finnish so you could read all about it.
Since you are obviously also trying to run a business, I would not be certain, if this was a smart move. If you decline responsibility towards us non-paying customers, maybe you have to answer to your advertisers. When you perform stunts like this without proper notice, it sends a message about your reliability. And this time, my friend, it was not a good one. Better luck next time.
I am moving forward to some other system, a system with a price tag - a system that I can rely on. Unfortunately it will not be Qlogger.
I hope that i get my site online as soon as possible, so i can copy my archives.
It was fun while it lasted. Hell, What did I expect from a service that offers "pot log"?
Yours mitvit, Finland (when it was up, it was http://mitvit.qlogger.com/)
ps. I hope this reaches the correct recipient. The qlogger main page feedback link is err.. well you know (look mommy, no four letter words).
-----Original Message----- From: Joe Reger, Jr. [mailto:joe@joereger.com] Sent: Friday, February 20, 2004 9:51 AM To: 'mit vit' Subject: RE: customer rant
Hi mitvit!
I do truly appreciate the feedback. And I agree that the update could have been handled much better. I don't want to lose the wonderful group of Finnish webloggers. I'd like your help to win them back but understand that you are likely not willing to do so. The service is stronger than ever despite my update struggles.
A big part of my move to open source tools was to gain more reliability by getting rid of the "quirks" of the Microsoft system. Now running on Java/Tomcat/MySql I have a better ability to backup data and get community support. I have a much more frequently updated set of tools. I have the ability to move to Linux which offers increased security and server clustering capability.
While it's not visible the security on the site has increased. By using a tighter programming model in the new site security has increased. Certainly it wasn't bad before... but it's better now.
Unfortunately, as the site was rebuilt there are some quality issues in it that weren't in there previously. Like the broken link you mentioned. I hate this and am working like crazy to get it back to the same quality level as before. I still believe that the upgrade was the correct move and that the long-term quality of the service will be much higher as a result.
The traffic limit is intended, like you say, to guide people to the paid version as they get more and more serious about their site. I chose 2500 monthly page hits based on analysis of most users. Clearly the Finnish webloggers are a much more active community. Tell me what you believe is a reasonable number. I'm certainly open to ideas and want to find a reasonable number that fits all of us.
Also, I've heard reports that the upgrade caused some unexpected character translation where "A's are becoming O's." I need to deal with this character set issue. Can you confirm this bug and share any details on it?
I'm very sorry for the shortcomings of the upgrade process. I owed you and all users a better one. However, underneath it all are a bunch of great new features that will make your community love the site even more. I need to get a list of enhancements together. It truly puts the service at the top of the heap. Now it's not only unique with things like the pot log and sex log... it's strong.
Please let me know what I can do to redeem the service and support your great community of Finnish webloggers.
Best,
Joe Reger
P.S. I think that your rant is excellent and would like your permission to post it to my personal site so that people know what's really happening.
SoCon08