What do you do if you are a large company whose sole business is to host weblogs for thousands of people only to find out that everything has been shutdown? Well first you tell your customers what happened and apologize. Then you could do what LiveJournal did and go into great detail about exactly what happened and how they plan on preventing it in the future.
EPO, by the way, stands for Emergency Power Off and it’s a national fire/electrical requirement for firefighters to be able to press these big red buttons near all exits that turn off all power in the entire data center. This is the second time this has happened to us in the years I’ve been there. The first time the button was unlabeled and unprotected and some dude thought it opened the door. This time we have no clue why it was pressed… maybe that dude tripped and fell onto it… mystery.
Although a large percentage of their customers will have no idea what Brad is talking about it’s refreshing to see such honesty coming from him. What makes it even better he does not take a “I am mightier than thou” approach by simply telling everyone that the power went out. Educating your customers while also keeping the communication lines open is what helps to develop trust. Trust builds relationships and relationships builds revenue.