Sitemeter Causes Chaos For Webmasters and IE Users
By Anna Johnson on August 4th, 2008Webmasters using the free web analytics widget Sitemeter must have been livid when they discovered why their sites weren’t loading for Internet Explorer (IE) browser users last Friday…
Apparently the problem was caused by a bug in IE that Sitemeter’s coders hadn’t counted on when updating the widget. Okay, mistakes happen. But what is unforgivable is Sitemeter’s failure to come clean about the problem to its user base.
Instead of informing its users about the problem, Sitemeter said NOTHING. As literally thousands of webmasters were left floundering, wondering what on Earth had cause their sites to be inaccessible by Internet Explorer.
Bad form, Sitemeter. Not because you caused the bug (you didn’t, it was a bug in IE). Not because your developers failed to account for the bug when updating your widget (mistakes happen). But because you failed to TELL YOUR USERS.
Sources: Nik Cubrilovic, “Sitemeter Kills Thousands Of Sites For IE Users”, Tech Crunch, August 2, 2008, Corvida, “Operation Aborted” in IE7 Because of Sitemeter”, Read Write Web, August 2, 2008
Tags: Bad Form, Browser Users, Chaos, Coders, Crunch, Developers, Explorer Browser, Explorer Ie, Failure, Hadn, Ie Browser, Ie7, Internet Browser, Internet Explorer, Last Friday, Sitemeter, Web Analytics, Webmasters, What On Earth, Widget
