SF loses power, Craigslist vanishes

So much for the fantasy of the bulletproof Web site. Yesterday, starting at about 2 PM Pacific time, a big chunk of downtown San Francisco lost power for two hours. That included the facilities of 365 Main Inc., the cohosting company that serves Craigslist, LiveJournal and other big Internet sites. (The L.A. Times has a good, if slightly snarky, story on the implications.)

Everything went down. Hard. 365 Main's official position is that they went to backup power, but that doesn't match up with what SixApart (the TypePad and LiveJournal people) was reporting through its support site. Craigslist was also offline, as were the other sites at 365 Main. Gift retailer RedEnvelope had just shut down a backup site in the midwest after two years without a glitch at the main San Francisco site; my guess is they're now looking for a new backup location.

No one seems to know what went wrong. Maybe 365 Main's backup generators came up but didn't stay up. Maybe there were other problems because power didn't just drop off, but fluctuated. No doubt a lot of questions are being asked.

But it's yet another wakeup call for businesses that rely on the Internet (and that's getting to be just about all of them): Co-hosting isn't perfect. Backups need backups. Contingency plans need contingency plans.

And, most of all, trust has no place in the technology business.