textdrive

At around this time last year (to be precise, one year and 2 days earlier), floatingsun was born. I had decided to move all my personal content off from lab machines and onto my own hosted space. At the time, not knowing any better, I had started off with PowWeb. But after about a month there, I decided to move to Textdrive.

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 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.

DISCLAIMER: I don't know Jeff or James. I don't work for Textdrive. I do know Jason though. Whatever I say is mere speculation. I don't mean to reflect upon anyone's character or personality. I'm just guessing.

For those who are interested, Jeff Blaine says he has been gang raped by the Textdrive forum piranha. James does an 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 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 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!

Its official now: Joyent has acquired Textdrive. Here is Dean's report on the forums and the official press release. I say official now because I found out about it sometime last night.

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)