Bloglines will triple its server capacity following scalability problems earlier this year.Following scalability problems earlier this year, popular Web-based RSS service Bloglines will shut down its service for four hours Monday in order to switch its operations to a new data center.
The company will stop crawling feeds at 2 p.m. PST and shut the service down completely at 4 p.m. PST. They expect to be back online at 8 p.m. PST.
The full notice is posted on the company blog.
"We've been working on this move for several months," said Mark Fletcher, general manager of Bloglines. "Scaling these things is very hard; it's a constant thing that never goes away."
Fletcher said the move will triple or possibly quadruple Bloglines' server capacity. The company's goal is to crawl all feeds once per hour.
Bloglines has tripled its use and traffic since Ask Jeeves acquired the company in February.
Bloglines currently indexes approximately 2.5 million new blog articles per day, according to Fletcher.
Bloglines experienced scalability problems earlier this year.
Several bloggers posted critiques of the service and expressed disappointment at the service's slow response time.
Bloglines acknowledged the problems, both on user blogs and on its own Web site.
"We're not going to beat around the bush about this. Bloglines performance has sucked eggs lately," read a post on the company blog. "Why? In short, Bloglines has been busting at the seams like the Incredible Hulk."
Fletcher said the company was focusing on scaling the service before it added additional features.
According to social software expert Clay Shirky, Bloglines is taking appropriate steps to rectify their problems.
"There's no solution to the problem of scaling," said Shirky. "If you're a fast-growing, database-backed service, when you hit the complexity wall, you hit it hard. You have to take active steps."
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