[Update June 8th, 2011 - 9:46am] Got an official email response from Ethan Bloch
Hi Bes,
The app was up but it appears one of our servers that handles sending out the Tweets had died. So sorry about this and the delayed response, currently we provide Timely support between 9-5pm PST.
That’s a good idea re: Twitter account that updates Timely status, will share with the team.
Everything should now be resolved and any Tweets you had queued that didn’t go out, should have been rescheduled.
Let me know if you’re having any issues.
—
Ethan Bloch
[Update June 8th, 2011 - 8:29am] The service seems to be sending out the tweets now!
Timely is down without any support, info or updates from its founding company Flowtown.
That means all your scheduled tweets are not going out, and your message is not going out to any of your followers.
Company not answering any questions
Timely.is site itself is working fine and you can still submit your tweets. Those tweets are not being sent out at all, however. As of this writing, Timely.is has been missing all the scheduled tweets for all Timely.is users for 7+ hours now. There have been no updates from the company, no emails and no responses. Our own emails [6:47pm PST June 7th, 2011] and tweets to the founding company Flowtown @FlowTown have gone unanswered.
Two of company’s founders, Ethan Bloch @ebloch and Dan Martell @danmartell have been on Twitter tweeting about other things since Timely.is stopped working. They have not tweeted anything about Timely.is, however. Their company says it specializes in ROI. Anyone using their Timely.is service has been left in the dust, though.
Users tweeting about Timely.is being down without any replies
Other users [including myself] have also tweeted about the Timely.is tweeting system being down, and again there has been no official response to anyone. This is one of the downsides of using any free service where the focus of the company has not been yet clear on how to monetize it. If it was a paid service, people would be requesting refunds or demanding answers. Since Timely.is is a free service, the company can afford to ignore it. However, because of the new social media world and existence of many users online and sites like Social Improve, such tactics of ignoring users does not go unnoticed online.
What is your view on how companies should respond to their users online in times of any downtime? What is an acceptable time frame for you for such free services to notify or update their customers on what is going on or to answer their questions? Would you trust Ethan Bloch or Dan Martell with any important social media services considering their customer support for their own Timely.is users?
Share your thoughts on this via the comments below, thanks.
Fantastic. Thanks for linking our twitter response in the article…and great way to get a response out of Timely! Bravo!
You’re welcome; thanks for the initial tweets and responses too.
Are you using the service full time now?
Nice to know why my time sensitive tweets never went out today. And they still aren’t working now. Very inconvenient.