Heres an open letter from Kristian Luoma, Product Manager, Contacts on Ovi, regarding the database crash that results in three weeks of lost user data.
Something bad happened yesterday. A cooler broke down in the hosting center that we run the Chat service in. This event lead in to two catastrophic consequences from our point of view. Firstly we had to ramp down the service down for a very long period, in fact most of the yesterday morning and afternoon we had a service break. Secondly, our database broke down. Despite the fact that we had regular back-ups, we were not able to set it right.
What we had to eventually do, was to return a back-up copy from our previous hosting center, created on the 23rd January 2009. As a consequence, anything that you’ve done since that (profile details, images, friendships) are gone. The problem has now been fixed and the server is now back and working. You should now be able to log back to your Contacts and start using it as normal. You do, however, need to invite your friends again etc.
Words can’t explain how incredibly sorry we are for the inconvenience. We’re sorry for the lost contacts in your phonebooks. We’re sorry that the profile pictures you love, and we love too are gone. Nothing can make this right, we know, but we’re hoping that you can forgive us and give another chance to give you good service.
We’ll make every effort to avoid this problem in the future. I am sorry.
- Kristian
