Kobayashi Maru - Dealing with downtime

One of the worst things that can happen to an online business is downtime. It doesn't matter if the servers crashed, the network connection "broke", or the data center was compromised; your users can't access your service which is bad.

Theory vs. Practice
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice - in practice, there is.

Ideally, a website should never suffer any downtime. In reality, downtime can't be avoided and it will happen whether planned or unplanned. Unlike brick and motor structures which are designed to withstand storms and earthquakes, online businesses are very fragile with many single points of failure such as DNS, loss of power, failed hardware, the easily cut T-1 or OC-3 cable, etc.

Implementing a contingency plan isn't an easy task and your plans will only work well when systems fail as you expected them to fail. You not only have to figure out what you're going to do under certain circumstances, but you have to rehearse it on a regular basis - this is what the military refers to as "exercise training". Not exercising such as pull-ups or push-up, but rather wargaming the scenarios which are most likely to occur and then actually executing the planned response.

Contingency Planning At Adjix
Adjix is a small company with limited resources, so we've implemented a simple solution to keep links running if our servers go down. We do this by relying on Amazon's web servers.

Every time our users create a shortened Adjix or ad.vu link, we implement it as a meta-refresh web page instead of the industry's more common HTML redirect (sometimes referred to as a 301 or 302 redirect). Should our servers go down, we can make a quick DNS change which takes about five minutes to propagate throughout the Internet. We believe broken links are a bad thing and although we may not be able to capture detailed link click data when this happens, our links will continue to work. We've tested this plan, at Adjix, a few times without skipping a beat - of course that's no guarantee that it will work perfectly in a future crisis, but it does lower risk while increasing confidence.

Serving up shorten URLs in this manner is not the industry norm, but we believe it gives us the security, should bad things happen, that we can continue to keep our links working. No plan is perfect - it's foreseeable that both our servers and Amazon's servers could go down at the same time – but we believe it's a solid plan commensurate with our budget.

Data Migration

This week, we are in the process of migrating your link click data to CSV format. This process will continue for a while since there are many millions of hits to migrate.

You'll know that your data has been migrated when you see a CSV file, next to your link, on your link stats page. We've migrated link click data up to April 15. Link clicks received after April 15 will show up where they always have: under your hits detail page.

The DiggBar Solution

Digg has received a lot of attention since launching their DiggBar a couple weeks ago. Sites like Engadget block the DiggBar which seems fair - engadget.com is their real estate and blocking it is trivial requiring a simple line of Javascript.

Of course, Digg could retaliate and block any story submitted that links to engadget.com (or, more simply, any link that leads to 207.200.75.1 or 207.200.95.1). But, I could never see this happening nor would it be productive.

However, I can envision a couple solutions that would allow the DiggBar to coexist with sites like Engadget.

1. Simple Solution
One issue that people have with the DiggBar is that users cannot see the domain name of where the content is hosted. To solve this problem, Engadget could set up a DNS alias such that digg.engadget.com points to the Digg URL.

This is a technique we allow people to use at Adjix. For example, the following two links point to the same resource located on ps-enable.com's servers:
http://adjix.com/35zs
http://partner.ps-enable.com/35zs

Note, in the ps-enable.com link, that the URL in the address field of your web browser corresponds the actual domain of the content. Now imagine replacing the ad, at the top of the page, with the DiggBar.

When using this solution, Digg could simply redirect http://digg.com/1234 to http://digg.engadget.com/1234. Although this isn't a perfect solution it does give the reader an idea of which website has published the content.

2. Partnership Solution
A more elegant solution would be if websites partnered with Digg. Digg could provide their partners with a JavaScript snippet to drop on their website much like Google AdSense.

In this solution, a Digg URL, such as http://digg.com/1234 would redirect to the partner's website which would display the DiggBar "organically". In other words, the DiggBar would be served up by the site where the content is hosted.

This partnership solution is win-win since the content provider gets the traffic from Digg and the DiggBar is displayed at the top of the page making it easier for people to digg stories.

Adjix Links on Twitter

If you've been posting Adjix links to Twitter, you'll notice something interesting. Within a minute or two of posting a link ten or twenty bots will click on your link to see where it leads. This is most noticeable with Adjix links that don't contain any ads since they are simple redirects.

Due to Twitter's popularity and API every time a link is posted to Twitter it can register dozens of clicks from these third party bots which automatically index every tweet. These are usually easy to spot, when reviewing your Adjix link stats, either due to their host name containing something obvious like crawl or bot or due to the fact that they usually don't have a referrer.

So, even though it seems that your links, posted to Twitter, receive a dozen clicks off the bat - it's not always people who are clicking on them.

Guy Kawasaki Touts Adjix During Keynote

Guy Kawasaki, who is a big fan of Adjix, touted our virtues when he gave the keynote speech at last week's Search Engine Strategies conference in NYC. Although he mentioned Adjix several times, the best segment is from 22:20 - 24:30.
http://adjix.com/423y

Data Migration

First, let me apologize for today's downtime. I cannot make any excuses and I take full responsibility for today's service interruption. While the Adjix service was down, we executed our fallback plan which enables adjix.com and ad.vu links to continue to redirect users properly. This plan uses Amazon's servers to serve up Adjix links, directly, forgoing ads and link click data collection.

We've collected a lot of data since we launched last August and we've begun implementing a data migration plan. Today was the first, big, step. You should notice that the Adjix website is more responsive, now. However, due to the massive size of the data, we've decided to bring Adjix back on line while we continue to migrate and archive the detailed link click (hit) data. The archiving process will take some time (days or longer) and you'll noticed that your link click details are not available, however, your link click totals should be correct.

I appreciate the messages that have been sent to us and thank you for your continued support.

Sincerely,
Joe Moreno
President
Adjix

Adjix2Twitter Embed Ads

We introduced a new advertising format today specifically designed to pay Twitter users who embed an ad at the end of their Twitter tweets. Payment is based on the number of followers that a Twitter user has and how much an advertiser is willing to pay for an embedded ad. We anticipate the payout from this new format will eclipse our current link shrinking ad program.

The new ad format, called Embed Ads, embeds an optional ad directly into a tweet - at the end. The ad is separated from the tweet by a blank line and the word "Ad:" - the former only shows up in SMS text messages (screen shot).

A short video demonstration of Adjix2Twitter used with Embed Ads is available here: http://adjix.com/ddew

Advertiser Info
Adjix allows advertisers to create two different types of ad campaigns. One ad campaign, called the Embed Ad Campaign, allows ads to run inside Twitter tweets. The other ad campaign which Adjix has offered since its launch in August 2008 is called the Link Shrink Ad Campaign and it allows ads to be attached to shortened (shrunk) links.

1. Advertisers can target all Twitter users or only certain Twitter users to run their ads. For example, an advertiser might only target Twitter users in certain cities or Twitter users who tweet about specific interests.

2. An advertiser may set an embargo frequency meaning that once a Twitter user embeds a specific ad, they can't rerun that same ad until the embargo time period has passed. However, the ad will be available to other Twitter users.

Advertisers can create simple Adjix Embed ad campaigns by logging into their Adjix Advertiser Account. Funds added to an advertiser's account can be used for either the Twitter Embed ad campaign or the Link Shrink ad campaign.

Advertisers set the price they are willing to pay for a Twitter user to tweet their ad. The price they set for their ad is multiplied by the number of followers of the Twitter user tweeting their ad. For example, an Advertiser who sets their ad's price at $0.001/Twitter-follower ($1 CPM) would pay $5 each time a Twitter user, with 5,000 followers, tweeted their ad. Advertisers get to see the contents of each tweet when their ad is embedded.

Twitter User (Linker) Info
Adjix users using Adjix2Twitter (also called Linkers on the Adjix website since they're usually including a link in their tweets) are presented the highest paying ads, first. However, not all Twitter users qualify for every ad - there are several reasons for this:

1. Some Twitter users may be excluded by advertisers based on region or content. (It doesn't make sense for a local, N.Y. pizzeria to have their ads run by a Twitter user who lives in Japan and tweets in Kanji).

2. Some Twitter users may encounter ads that are embargoed meaning that once they send out an ad they may have to wait a period of time before they can resend it. However, during the embargo period, the ad will be available to other qualified Twitter users.

3. A Twitter user with many followers may be beyond the budget of an advertiser. For example, a Twitter user with 100,000 followers would not have an opportunity to run an ad from an advertiser paying $1 CPM if the advertiser has less than $100 remaining in their Adjix advertiser account.

Twitter users earn revenue from Adjix based on the ad price set by the advertiser multiplied by the number of followers that Twitter user has. For example, if a Twitter user, with 1,000 followers sends out a tweet with an ad with a pays out $0.0005/follower ($0.50 CPM) then that Twitter user would earn $0.50 for that tweet. Earnings from links and earnings from Embed Ads are tracked separately in each Linker's account.

Installing the Adjix2Twitter Web Browser Bookmarklet/Plug-in
You'll need to log into your Adjix Linker account in order to get your customized Adjix2Twitter Bookmarklet. The Adjix2Twitter Bookmarklet (sometimes referred to as a plug-in) can be dragged and dropped on your web browser's toolbar in Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. It also works in Internet Explorer, but, you may need to right-click on it to save it instead of dragging and dropping it on your toolbar.

Here's a short video demonstrating how to install your Adjix2Twitter Bookmarklet (plug-in) for Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Internet Explorer :
http://adjix.com/g869

Is there really enough room in a tweet for an ad?
Yes! Damon Cortesi, from TweetStats, was kind enough to share some private stats with me regarding the average length of a tweet. For example, Guy Kawasaki [*See disclaimer below], who has sent out close to 20,000 tweets since joining Twitter in August 2007, averages about 35 tweets/day.

Damon tells me that Guy's average tweet length is about 71 characters long or, just about half of the allowable 140 character limit.

The main Twitter account used by the NY Times, which seems to be the leading news organization that "gets it" when it comes to Twitter, also averages about 70 characters per tweet. The NY Times sends out about 40 tweets/day for a total of nearly 30,000 tweets sent, since they joined Twitter almost two years ago.

While these two Twitter "power users" only represent a small sample, it's clear that most tweets don't come close to maxing out the 140 character limit. This unused space is the perfect place for an ad. With Adjix2Twitter Embed Ads, Twitter users can see exactly what the ad will say, how much it will pay out, and whether it will fit inside their tweet before it's sent.

Advertising Opportunities Abound
We see many possible uses for Adjix Embed Ads; but, at the top of the list are news organizations. Currently, newspapers and magazines receive a large chunk of their revenue not from paying subscribers but, rather, from advertising. Now, a news organization can tweet out a headline with a link to the full text of the article followed by an Adjix Embed Ad, all in a single tweet.

Do we really need more ads?
Ads are like rainy days - no one likes them but we need a little from time to time.

Over the past decade, as the cost of delivering timely, relevant, content became cheaper, people have been less willing to pay for it. This has created many challenges in the publishing world as this industry tries to reinvent themselves since more and more people now get their news online than from print. I often joke that a newspaper is a hard copy printout of the Internet with yesterday's news. Newspapers who now think of themselves as online news outlets that happen to publish a newspaper have a much better chance of surviving compared to companies who simply think of themselves as a newspaper that happens to have a website.

Expectations
Adjix is venturing into new territory with our Embed Ads. As we stick our toe into the water, we anticipate new opportunities and challenges. Do not hesitate to contact me with your comments or questions.

Cheers,
Joe Moreno
President
Adjix
6965 El Camino Real
Suite 105-530
Carlsbad, CA 92009
j.moreno+embed@adjix.com
760.444.4721
http://www.adjix.com
Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/adjix

* Disclaimer: Many people have asked Guy Kawasaki what his interest is in Adjix. As Guy has mentioned several times (and, for the record) he has no interest in Adjix other than he's an avid user of Adjix2Twitter. When Adjix launched, we were very fortunate that he tweeted about our launch and new features. He has blogged about us a couple times here and here. Last week, he reiterated his love for Adjix when a security issue was discovered. Obviously, we're very thankful for his attention. Guy is a true enabler of entrepreneurs.