I really don’t know what convinced me then. I mean, Textdrive was not big and it certainly wasn’t famous. I didn’t personally know of anyone else who was hosted there, and yet, something told me that this would be a good choice. I can proudly say that the service has been incredible the past year. I got to hang out with the CTO of Textdrive (and now Joyent), I [[http://floatingsun.net/blog/2005/10/07/218/|got my picture taken with davie]], I witnessed the merger with Joyent, I got sucked into the life long hosting plan, and then later the life long Mixed-Grill offer.

So in another 2 weeks I would have burnt out my one year long plan with Textdrive. Technically speaking, my lifetime hosting plan will start only after that. So far things are looking great and I have nothing to complain about (except that I’m really not using my strongspace and joyent accounts — hopefully they will see some use in due course of time). So long as things keep up the way they have been, I can say that this was probably one of the best investments (value-for-money wise) I’ve ever made.

For those who are interested, [[http://www.kickflop.net/blog/?p=107|Jeff Blaine says he has been gang raped by the Textdrive forum piranha]]. James does an [[http://www.shtuff.us/weblog/124/a-story-about-jeff|excellent analysis]] of the story.

I don’t have strong reactions either way. I can very well understand that once Jeff felt/thought he was being intimidated on the forums, its natural to expect him to keep on ranting about Textdrive on his blog, and keep defending his position. It also seems that Jeff is interpreting the “overwhelming” responses he has received and the lack of posts in favor of TxD as reflecting the //public opinion// or even an indicator of right or wrong in this case. I just want to make a few comments:

* AFAIK, Jason //never// called out or explicitly named anyone asshole or dick. Now people are free to read between the lines and interpret things how they want. But the fact remains. Jeff [[http://www.kickflop.net/blog/?p=107|claims]] that Jason explicitly called him out, and I beg to differ. If you have a forum post showing Jason making that statement, please let me know.
* From all accounts, it seems to me that TxD is acutely aware of the situation: customer support, more visible official status reports and management information — all of that is being worked on right this minute. Considering that TxD is barely two years old (slightly less, I believe) right now, I think that they are (and have been) responding well to customer demands. I think people forget that TxD had a huge datacenter migration only a few months back, and that TxD hosts the likes of Rails and WordPress and Turbogears. Thats a lot of smart people doing a lot of smart things, and they all seem to be happy with TxD. Not being so knowledgeable enough myself, I would go with the collective wisdom here, and //give them a chance//. Changes don’t happen overnight.
* There are others on the forum who are critical of Textdrive, but [[http://forum.textdrive.com/viewtopic.php?pid=65691#p65691|express themselves]] in a more constructive manner. Let us all take a deep breath, smile and think before we write. It helps me a lot.

FWIW, I’m on davie, my uptime since I joined TxD has constantly been > 99%, and the rare occassions where I’ve had to file a ticket, they were resolved promptly. Go davie, little brother!

The big question that everyone is asking of course, is what happens to Textdrive now. The whole “merger vs. acquisition” thing has got a lot of people worried, and rightly so — because as Textdrive customers they have a right to know whats going on, why and what the impact is going to be. That said, atleast I’m fairly confident that there is not much to worry about really.

As Dean already points out in his post, nothing is going to change about Textdrive. The plans have become better, and will continue to evolve with the changing needs. I think Textdrive has already carved out a niche for itself as a cutting edge web hosting company which has a strong passion and commitment towards a variety of open source projects, notably WordPress and Rails. However, as Textdrive has been expanding the last few months, several people have remarked that the Textdrive staff always seems overworked (because they are) or support needs to improve (because it does) or Textdrive needs to deliver on Textpanel and Anemone (because it does).

Mind you, none of this is dissatisfaction, in the sense of “these people are not doing what they are supposed to be doing”. Rather, its //expectation// of the form that “these people are doing such a great job with these other things, I can’t wait to see what Textpanel and Anemone” look like. There’s excitement, which is why sometimes people get impatient.

On the other hand, Joyent seems to have a good handle on the software side of things. They are in the business of delivering tightly integrated, //packaged// solutions — vertical integration through the stack. Take the Google Search Appliance and generalize it to targeted, focused webservices — something along those lines. In Textdrive, Joyent gets a much needed hardware expertise. And in Joyent, Textdrive gets a much needed application development and management support.

So take it easy folks. Its neither Textent nor Joydrive — its simply Joyent + Textdrive (or Joy with Textdrive, or Drive with Joyent if you prefer) :-)

I guess I didn’t communicate well. Perhaps, the [[http://onotech.blogspot.com/2005_11_01_onotech_archive.html#113200904055483341|this story]] from [[http://zevents.com|Zevents]] will help — its a good example of what has happened to many Urchin customers. And this was just for Urchin 6. The older, Urchin 5 customers have had to deal with even worse customer support.

Here’s one quote from a Mr. Scott Crosby, supposedly at Urchin in response to [[http://simplicio.com/index.php?id=4|this post]]:

>Urchin certainly isn’t “killed” a la Keylime, quite the opposite – it’s going absolutely gangbusters. Perhaps the best analogy is that being part of Google is like trying to drink water from a fire hose – not easy to keep up with the volume. We are rapidly ramping up staff and resellers to accommodate the flood of inquiries, have massively expanded our infrastructure, and have cut the price in half (on demand). Not sure how that’s evil, but I can appreciate customer frustration. We’re doing our best to keep up, but there are only so many hours in the day. That said, please try sales@urchin.com or http://www.urchin.com/support/ – many improvements have been made and response times are much better.

To which, Nathan said:

> There’s one thing that continually surprises me, and what I think Mr. Crosby missed:

> Not only is TextDrive itself upset at Urchin’s poor response and customer service, TextDrive’s customers are taking the company to task for how Google has handled their acquisition!

> Pissing off your customers is one thing. But pissing off your customer’s customers? How many other hosting companies have been left in this kind of situation, and what do their users think about Urchin now?

I think that sums up the situation quite nicely. While everyone is going gaga over Google Analytics, clearly a lot of people are not very happy with how the entire transition has been dealt with.

Well, guess what. I happen to be one of the central characters in a [[http://forum.textdrive.com/viewtopic.php?id=6713&p=1|historic post]] over at TxD [[http://forum.textdrive.com/|forums]]. If you have some time on your hands, just go through that thread. Its already **14 pages** and still counting.

Its another matter that the thread is about all things Jason and TxD. I’m just glad to be part of the post that started it all :)

Whats amazing is that Jason is still on top of that thread. He’s answering //each// question. And people have //so many// questions. Its just amazing.

I had mentioned the [[http://floatingsun.net/blog/2005/08/21/134/|TxD move to San Diego]] earlier. Not only is TxD in San Diego, it turns out that co-founder and COO, Jason Hoffman lives right here. Not only that, he literally lives //next door// to me. No really, if I really yell out loud, he can probably hear me!

So anyways, I was hanging out on the IRC channel 2 days back and I just mentioned that I might like to go down to the data center someday and get my picture taken with davie (the machine I’m hosted on). Much to my surprise, Jason said he was heading down right then and asked me if I wanted to join him.

And so, that was how I saw the building where Textdrive now resides. I’d never been in a data center before, so it was pretty cool being there. Of course I got my picture taken with davie :)

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>This is the real internet boom, right here. This is what so many people ran after but never managed to catch. And the really funny thing is, I mean this is the truly remarkable but not so surprising reality of the situation…. Dean never planned this. Either did Jason. It’s been unfolding as they’ve moved forward. In the business world it’s called synergy. It doesn’t come around very often and most people don’t realize it when it’s happening because they’re too wrapped up in other things…. More often than not, the wrong things.

> I can’t remember who I was recently talking with about this but it dawned on me that this little enterprise is really no different than MacAfee, Jobs, Gates, Nolan Bushnell or a few other fortunate and passionate souls. Something, was built out of nothing because of a passion. It’s like children. You don’t just up and sell ‘em. Least wise, not in these parts. Life is simply too short to part with the things that make us happy. All of the history lessons say the same thing. Find something that you love to do and the rest will just fall into place. Unless I am very mistaken, I believe Dean and Jason love this.

Again, I’m //so// glad I’m with TxD, for life now :)

Long story short, Google bought [[http://urchin.com|Urchin]] sometime back, and have not been responding to [[http://textdrive.com|Textdrive]]’s constant requests to //take their money// and renew their data-center license. You can find all the juicy details (courtesy Simplicio) at [[http://simplicio.com/|How Google killed Urchin]].

Please blog about this aggresively, bookmark it to del.icio.us — how can Google //not// notice this? Sheesh!

Meanwhile, Textdrivers have decided to take things into their own hands. Please help us all by filling out [[http://projects.shtuff.us/anemone/survey/|this survey]]. If you have a //lot// of time, check out [[http://forum.textdrive.com/viewtopic.php?id=5843|these]] [[http://forum.textdrive.com/viewtopic.php?id=5932|threads]]

TxD is //so// cool :)