I think I’m bad luck to Web 2.0 companies.  The moment I start using them, things break.

Today, Ma.gnolia, the social bookmarking competitor to del.icio.us, had a total failure: data corruption and loss.

According to their press release (with the wrong date, mind you):

Dear Ma.gnolia Community Members or Visitor:

Early on the West-coast morning of Friday, January 31st, Ma.gnolia experienced every web service’s worst nightmare: data corruption and loss.  For Ma.gnolia, this means that the service is offline and members’ bookmarks are unavailable, both through the website itself and the API.  As I evaluate recovery options, I can’t provide a certain timeline or prognosis as to when or to what degree Ma.gnolia or your bookmarks will return; only that this process will take days, not hours.

I will of course keep you appraised here and in our Twitter account.

Most importantly, I apologize to all of you who have made Ma.gnolia a home for your bookmarks and community.  I know many of you rely on Ma.gnolia in your day to day work and play flow to safely host you [sic] bookmarks, keeping them available around the clock, and that this is a difficult disruption.

Sincerely,

Larry

Ma.gnolia founder Larry Halff launched the service in 2006 based on open standards and group integration of bookmarks.  It was a nice service, and as someone who travels and uses a multitude of devices, I can only hope they recover quickly.  No one is sure if they had a total data loss (unrecoverable) or such a big one that recovering it will indeed take days.

Note to bloggers: today is a GREAT DAY to backup your entire server, including MySQL databases and other data.

Related posts:

1. Darkest before the boom