"Faceback" -- Analyzing the Facebook Backup Plan after NY Times Outage

On August 14 of this year, the New York Times web site experienced an outage that affected its web and mobile services. The outage lasted for around an hour and a half. The explanation was similar to others the GlitchReporter has listed on this site: the problem emerged when a maintenance update had been released.

Tentative Root Cause Analysis

Software testing failure.

Other Worries

The outage was significant for a number of reasons, but two of them are worthy of additional analysis.

1. Hacker Scare There was an abundance of tweets suggesting that the site had been hacked by Chinese adversaries, or had been the object of a DoS attack. This misinformation is likely to become a recurring issue and not only for the NYT. While it can be subsequently "disproven," some customers will continue to believe that site had been hacked and is thus less reliable than previously believed.
2. Failover and Backup While the New York Times technology folks were sorting out what their representative called "an internal problem," important news was happening. Computerworld said that at around 12:45 p.m.on the day of the outage, "the Times tweeted that it was posting major breaking stories on its Facebook page." As the Guardian's Dan Gilmore worried, this is a flawed, and perhaps simply a spur of the moment decision. Social network platforms should provide channels for announcements of alternate NYT digital publication channels -- not host them. 

New York Times Film Reviews Lost in NYTIMES.COM Hyperspace

A broken hyperlink is no big deal. Some days it's a regular occurrence. It's another matter altogether when a major media outlet has more than a few dead links to itself.

The Times indexes its film reviews on a single page. Readers can select by title, year, genre, critic or country of origin. Title seemed a natural choice.

My search began on the "A" page. Select just the recommended films. The very second starred review, "A Man and His Dog," results in a dead link (error 404?). A fluke? Try "A Christmas Tale." "A Girl Cut in Two." "A Mighty Heart." "A Toute de Suite." "Across the Universe."

And so it goes, and not just titles beginning with "A". A casual attempt to find the "Man and His Dog" review through Google and Bing turned up an interview with the leading actor in this film. Is that the hidden review?

Yes, the New York Times has lots of reviews of lots of films. This symptom is to be expected (but no less annoying) when news stories move from headline position to archive or bit bucket. Yahoo's third party new story links are notoriously short-lived for this reason. But a recurring error across a valuable content area reveals a systemic problem at the Times. Perhaps its recent downsizing has resulted in the loss of valuable content, quality control staff, or, at the least, a certain lost expertise in how to use -- or compel proper usage of -- a content management system.