First the good news: Technorati is back up.Then the great news: Technorati isn't afraid to tell its users exactly what happened. After the site saw some serious downtime today, the company explained there was a network equipment failure that hit the company's services in a big way. They believe they've come a long way in offering great services and response times, and will be finding out how to avoid the issue in the future.
Best yet, they reached out to those of us affected. I had called Dave Sifry this afternoon to see what had gone wrong, and if possible, what could be done to help. Unlike just about any other CEO I can think of, he answered the phone in the middle of the crisis.
And the company, as it should, hit the blogosphere to respond. Ian Kallen, in the company's core services engineering group, wrote me during the situation, saying "We're bringing our systems back online now."
In what was no doubt a very frustrating time for Technorati, they didn't hide from the situation, but addressed it and will hopefully learn from it, helping bring enterprise class service to an already excellent product.