Cast your mind back a good week or so to the 11th of October. For many this was a typical October Tuesday, filled with whatever the hell you do on a Tuesday, but for some this was the worst day of their social calendar. On, what I am dubbing, Black Tuesday, Blackberry owners across Europe, Africa and the Middle East were left with a devastating lack of coverage. This was the plague of the 21st century, this was our Black Death; at least it was if you were a Blackberry user and you actually gave two damns about it all.
Even though Research In Motion (RIM) are a Canadian based company, Black Tuesday was caused by a problem with their UK servers based in the wonderful town of Slough. The collapse of Blackberry based society crushed a reported 10 million users, which out of the 70 million out there is not too bad a loss, however try talking to someone who had troubles and they’ll tell you it’s a fate worse than death. In fact it might as well be death as they’ve already committed social suicide.
I myself have a Blackberry phone and I must have been in the majority of users who wasn’t affected as I could use my phone like a whizz-kid, if I was really that fussed. My Facebook and Twitter was crammed with status updates about Black Tuesday and the week that followed, it appears the entire web was imploding with angry and hilarious Tweets and status’:
‘3 days!! Thats like eternity in this modern era of communications… and this is BB we are talking about… “industrial strength” “premium” service.’,
Other status’ and posts follow a similar pattern. Apparently people can’t be without their precious BBM for more than a day. God forbid what the world was like before such services ever existed! I know that I can hardly remember those dark, dark days after I blocked them entirely from my memory.
One man’s Tweet empahsied the real problem with Black Tuesday:
‘Dear Blackberry I think its nice you are honoring Steve Job’s death with a 3 day silence’
RIM couldn’t have had the server fault at a worse time. After Steve Job’s death the world was worshiping Apple and all it delivers, people were salivating at the mouth for a bite of that juicy green fruit and its latest fashion accessory, the iPhone 4S. Many people claimed they were going to ‘throw away my BB and get an iPhone’, which is a great help to the environment, but surely that’s only an option to those who can afford more expensive fruit based phones. It seems that a HTC or other Android devices are not a topic for discussion when it comes to changing your handset, people just love their fruits it seems.
RIM are apologetic for causing those bleak days that followed Black Tuesday, but to make a mends they are offering over $100 worth of free apps via Appworld over the coming weeks. They have also offered a months free subscription to their backup and network services that many business already use. Not bad really, and at least this way you can keep your Blackberry.
