Tumblr just can’t catch a break. Yeah, yeah, they’re getting a billion dollars from Yahoo — but it’s been a torrent of criticism ever since. Angry users! Porn! Poooooorn!
Know what probably won’t help? Botching the key detail of an email sent to many of your most tech-savvy users.
Tumblr just sent out a big ol’ mass email to all of the users who host a Tumblr blog through their own, independently owned domain. In other words, to the folks who know enough about these bleepy-bloopy electronic space typewriters we use to be able to get a bit fancy with their Tumblr blogs.
It warned users of an impending change they’d need to make to their settings — a new IP address they needed to point their domain at — unless they wanted their blog to suddenly “no longer work“.
The catch: they, uh, kinda forgot the most important part. They’d put in a placeholder for the IP, and… it never got replaced. “Please point your custom domain to [IP Address],” it directed. Wherps.
For many of these users, this was among the first emails they’d received since the Yahoo acqusition. Within about 30 seconds, the tweets lampooning the email started going up.
Moral of the story: If you work at a lil’ company and manage to botch a mass email, don’t worry too much. You’re in good company. Billion dollar company.