What Happens When a Blog Shuts Down for 24 Hours?

So the big question was, did the link bait for for getting more readers to johnchow.com?

Are there any hosts that you would recommend against using? Bad experiences / Too much downtime / etc. for both large and small accounts?

Nice experiment. I also worry when my website doesnt work.

JohnCow posted that the redirect to this site was an accident, you say it was done by design...which is it?

Sometimes my blog is down for several minutes, I don't know why. But when it happens, I hate it.

great article i enjoyd it.

Damn, you cheated all your readers thinking them as guinea pigs, huh?

It's not about having a sense of humor, but the whole prank just wasn't that funny. I'll still read the blog, but I don't get all these people sucking up to the Cow and telling him it was such a great joke. Maybe it's 'cos I'm British.

We apologize to everyone without a sense of humor.

I've got to admit, it was probably one of the stupidest things I've ever seen in my 5+ years as a blogger.

I just don't see the point of generating such a buzz like that just to gain readers. There's millions upon millions of ways to generate a buzz.

Fair enough April Fool's Day, but to go out and deliberately deceive your readers like that is just horrible.

If I was advertising on that blog too, I'd say it was a breach of contract, and ask for a full refund.

Evil cows and evil chows! Now, that's a team!

Interesting that the Cows RSS subscription was down by 25% in one day. I wonder if that's a standard sort of drop off?

With the number of RSS readers on this blog a 25% reduction is big numbers and a lot of people to replace!

Who's promoting who here? Is Chow promoting Cow or Cow promoting Chow - or is it an evil double team the likes of which we've never seen before!

In which case we're all doomed! :evil:

is it Cow rejected by TLA and Adsense. Right?

Long live the evil :evil: cows!

Ok...I understand the April fools joke about selling TTZ Media and the Blog, but this is just silly. :sad:

Does nobody else feel a bit let down? Maybe it's just me.

hmm i never understood why anyone would want to sue that cow site anyways. now it all makes sense.

I kind of figured it out last week when it was in your Bloglog.

Evil Cows... that's the stuff of a bad horror movie ;)

Good to know that down-time does not mean extinction. Just having started my own blog, I have already faced a number of hurdles but I have found people to be really supportive.

LOL. Really njoyed this article. Thank you.

I always had this feeling and I as I wrote in my earlier writings also that John Chow and John Cow were the same person. But off late I feel that I was wrong in thinking this and in fact this parody is the work of a group operating under John Chow. Although this drama is dishonest, but still it helped John Chow and John Cow to build a strong position. It definitely created ripples amongst the regular visitors of both the sites. The tension was worth seeing. Comments coming from people speculating different things as if there was some emergency. Some people like me were able to get the benefit of this drama, although a very small percentage, but I should admit that I was able to get some extra redirection of traffic to my site because people were eager to find more and more information about this story and visited almost every page which even had 'John Chow' or 'John Cow' although in a different context. However, the question of being honest with your readers is quite sensitive as it would need to address the underlying issues like blog ethics. So I would prefer we let Mr.Chow take a call on this.

They are NOT the same person :) but seem to work well as a team, I was shocked that they did this, but gotta say, it does seem to have worked

So I guess, Good job :)

Good Job Senor Cow or should I say Chow :wink:

Ehh this to be honest is one post I am not impressed with. Just goes to show how one can be very decieving. And just to gain readers. Kinda dishonest don't you think?