Blip.TV, the video provider relied upon by many independent digital shows has been down since a little after 2am PST, according to isitdownrightnow.com.
Because of this, any videos hosted on Blip.TV (for example, Category5 Technology TV on-demand and main RSS feeds) are entirely inaccessible, and even the Blip.tv web site is not available during the outage.
I must say, this is a first that I’ve ever seen such an extended outage for Blip.TV, who have always been pretty reliable in spite of their growth. Their Twitter feed is silent, and since their site is down, we know nothing yet about what’s going on, but we know it’s down, and has been down for several hours.
Update #1 – Auto tweets and blog entries continue to auto-post (albeit, laced with deadlinks), but no sign of any realtime notes from Blip.TV directly.
Update #2 – Tasherre Risay commented below that Blip.TV is located in New York. Absolutely understandable then that there’d be issues. I hope everyone is okay, and our thoughts and prayers go out. Hoping for at least an update as to the status and what’s actually happening.
Update #3 – 11am Eastern: as Peggy George commented, the Error 503 message has been updated on Blip.tv to the following:
I received a note from Blip “We are currently experiencing unexpected downtime due to flood water in Manhattan affecting our colocation data center. We expect to be back up within the hour as the generators come online but may experience temporary outages through Friday.” Our thoughts continue to be with the Blip team and all those who are affected by Hurricane Sandy.
Update # 4 – Annie Tsai (Blip.tv’s social media manager) informed us below that she’ll be able to update us via social media now that she has access to power.
Update # 5 – 12:45pm Eastern – Blip.tv is responding and serving up videos!
The site itself seems to be up and running, but I’ve tried over 20 different videos from different uploaders on blip and none of them will load. I can’t find anyone else mentioning this online – is it just me or are the videos actually down?
I just checked for you by loading the most recent episode of Category5.TV and it loaded perfectly fine for me. Try a reboot of your router in case the outage did something odd to your dns, and also a computer reboot for the same reason. Let us know!
We can indeed expect intermittent issues, but right now, video is working for me.
Thrilled to see that blip.tv is back online (shortly after I sent my last reply). About 7:30am PDT. 🙂 Miraculous recovery given all that is going on! Thank you Blip!
Hey Robbie, yes it’s true – we’re based in New York and currently experiencing downtime due to Hurricane Sandy’s effects. The team is working on bringing the site back up as quickly as possible. The delay in getting an update out across social media is because I personally (hi, I’m Blip’s social media manager) was without power this morning. Sorry about that! I’m in a location with power now, and will continue updates on Facebook and Twitter. Thanks!
Fantastic, thanks Annie. Please feel free to post the Facebook and Twitter links here for us and I’ll include them in the live blog.
Hope you’re all doing well and that the damage is minimal. Welcome back to the interwebs!
Hi Annie. As long as you all are safe, that’s all I’m concerned about.
I need to add a “like” button to these comments. +1 for Tasherre’s comment.
Blip has changed their message to: “Hurricane Sandy is having her way with us. Blip should be back in just a moment.” Not sure about the moment it will take to recover but it’s reassuring to know they were able to change the comment. We are hosting an online conference with all of the presentations posted on Blip so we’re crossing our fingers for a speedy recovery. Fortunately we also posted the recordings on iTunesU so they are still accessible to many during the interim.
They’re in New York. Totally understandable considering Sandy is still a factor.
Thanks for the note. Yes, absolutely a factor. Hope everyone is alright.
Same here