As a website design and website hosting company, we were definitely paying attention to GoDaddy over this past week. Last Monday started out with an announcement that GoDaddy, the world's largest host of secure websites, had been hacked, causing a massive service outage to a portion of their 5 million hosted sites and related services. GoDaddy, unable to use regular modes of communicating with their customers, immediately turned to Twitter and email and put out this message:
The outages began around 1 p.m. Eastern Time, and by early evening, was pretty much fixed. By Tuesday morning, GoDaddy was setting the record straight: "It was not a 'hack' and it was not a denial of service attack (DDoS)," explained Scott Wagner, GoDaddy's interim CEO. "We have determined the service outage was due to a series of internal network events that corrupted router data tables." Wagner goes on to say that GoDaddy had restored service and taken measures so outages would not occur again. He also made assurances that no customer data was put at risk nor were their systems compromised. Along with a formal apology, comes a credit offer, an obvious effort to retain customers who were affected by the outage. It was reported that small businesses took the biggest hit because, for them, being out of service for a few hours.
meant lost sales, vital communication, and perhaps landing potential new customers. GoDaddy's swift response, via email, was this:
And here is the Twitter string, a further demonstration of how to keep connected and communicate with your customers during such an unfortunate event:
10 Sep Go Daddy:
Status Alert: Hey, all. We're aware of the trouble people are having with our site. We're working on it.
10 Sep Go Daddy:
So many messages, can't get to you all... Sorry to hear all your frustration. We're working feverishly to resolve as soon as possible.
10 Sep Go Daddy:
Update: Still working on it, but we're making progress. Some service has already been restored. Stick with us.
10 Sep Go Daddy:
We're continuing our work to get back on track. This is our #1 priority. We'll keep posting updates here. Thanks for all the support.
10 Sep Go Daddy:
Update: More progress has been made. We're still investigating and working, though.
10 Sep Go Daddy:
We're still working. Getting closer to normal. Thanks for all your patience and understanding.
10 Sep Go Daddy:
Most sites are back online. We're working out the last few kinks for our site & control centers. No customer data was compromised.
11 Sep Go Daddy:
Good morning, everyone. Thanks for your support yesterday. We posted a message about the outage: http://x.co/gdupdate - Not an attack.
11 Sep Go Daddy:
Customers who haven't received an email from us about Monday's outage- please hang tight, your special offer is coming in the next few days.
Despite all their efforts, GoDaddy most surely felt the sting of lost customers as the outage may have been the "straw that broke the camel's back." GoDaddy has recently been the topic of hot criticism for constant up-selling, elephant killing, aligning with SOPA, and the use of scantily clad GoDaddy Girls.
