I would agree that it would be terrible to pass up new customers, but it’s not worth angering thousands of existing (paying) customers. You need to take care of the customers you have before you go diluting their service level with new customers (who are sure to be disappointed with the service right off the bat).

I point this out because your statement that it was “greed” that lead to Typepad’s growing pains should be underscored as _your_opinion_. However, you write it as if it were a fact–as if it were something Typepad had confessed somehow–as some sort of proven, conclusive actuality.

If this sort of reporting were valuable to me, I’d go buy National Enquirer or maybe even L.A. Times. I expect much more from bloggers of the world, though.

If you’re going to state an opinion, couch it as such. Doing the opposite only serves to lessen your own credibility. That, of course, is just my opinion.

Further, and here is another one for you, the idea that they should have stopped taking on customers is quite preposterous. If you’ve ever been in a similar situation you know that you NEVER stop taking on customers if there is any possible shred of hope that you can service them despite your growth.

Have you ever run a business that was growing at breakneck pace or been responsible for 10s or 100s of employees and 1000s or millions of customers? I have (from 100 employess to 7,000 in less than 4 years) and honestly that “just stop taking on customers” idea is devoid of any real business reality which would come from true experience.

If Typepad had told me “we’re growing, sorry, can’t take you on right now”, I’d have considered it madness and proceeded to their nearest competitor. It’s a de facto “given” that a growing company is allowed some growing pains and meanwhile they had just better work out whatever the problems is, make it go right and meanwhile stay in close communication with their customers. To send the customers away, the ones you’ve worked so hard to attract, is equivalent to commercial suicide.

Maintaining and growing a data center with such a robust and powerful application as TypePad isn’t such a cut and dried exercise. I think that Barak’s (CEO, Six Apart) his post explains the difficult sitaution very well.

See http://www.sixapart.com/typepad/news/2005/10/to_our_customers.html

All I can say at this point is that there are a LOT of people working very hard to get TypePad back to the level of service that our customers have come to expect, but also to prepare it for the long road ahead. Very soon, these problems will be a thing of the past.