Google Blogger's unlucky Friday the 13th shutdown

Friday the 13th turned out to be truly unlucky for some users of Google's Blogger service, as they could not post new content to their blogs.

Some Blogger users got an error message saying that Blogger could not be accessed, along with an apology for the inconvenience.

"Ang Blogger ay hindi magagamit sa ngayon. Humihingi kami ng paumanhin para sa ganitong pagkagambala sa serbisyo (Blogger cannot be used for now. We ask for understanding for the inconvenience)," it said in a message to Philippine-based Blogger users.

It also offered a link to the service's site maintenance log (status.blogger.com) where users can check the site's status.

As of 4:30pm on Friday (Philippine time), a message dated May 12 said that Blogger would be in read-only mode for "maintenance."

"Blogger will be in read-only mode while we resolve some maintenance issues. Sorry for the inconvenience," the log entry said.

A similar message was posted May 9, saying that Blogger was to go into read-only mode on May 11 but only "for about an hour for maintenance."

Meanwhile, Blogger's official Twitter accont (@blogger), has been inundated by irate tweets. The company has been painstakingly replying to each one, apologizing for the outage and assuring a quick solution to the problem.

"Our sincere apologies. We're working hard to restore service, and your loyalty," Blogger tweeted repeatedly.

At 3:25pm, Blogger issued an update on its attempts to fix the outage:

"To get Blogger back to normal all posts since 7:37am PT on Wed 5/11 have been temp removed. We expect everything to be back to normal soon," the company said. — TJD, GMA News