Between the cracks: t61, m61, protest songs, Tech Crunch
What fell between the cracks this week? thesixtyone.com fails to post a real update while movementsixtyone.com posts many; protest songs cause a stir on t61; Tech Crunch comments get hacked including post about t61
It has been nearly ten days since the site-wide design changes to thesixtyone.com (t61), and yet there is still no significant update or letter to the community about the changes. Those that have been holding out on the hope that owners James and Sam would share their reasoning behind the redesign have mostly given up. The only signs of feedback to the community appeared on their blog on Monday, January 25, proclaiming the addition of a “saved songs” category for users.
Meanwhile, movementsixtyone.com tries to keep you updated about what the folks at t61 aren’t keeping you in the loop about.
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A flurry of t61 protest songs made the home page this week. On Wednesday afternoon, Dr. Mic And The Brain Ninjas’ “Bring Back The Old Sixtyone” and Hollis Smith’s “Bring Back The Old T61” hit the T61 “home page.” (With the new design, it doesn’t seem like there is a home page as there was with the old design.) The achievement was without doubt thanks to the legions of T61 protesters that pushed them up the charts.
And arguably in even more glorious fashion, Lynskey’s “F— THE NEW DESIGN” posted to the front of T61 on Friday afternoon. The song, a continuous loop of dissonant noise, posted with a pixelated image and details about how much the new design sucked, title of the song in bold letters.
At least one Internet user thought that thesixtyone.com had been hacked when confronted with the track upon opening the site in his Web browser.
“In what appears to be an immature backlash from a disgruntled user, someone hacked thesixtyone,” said user rjett on the site Hacker News. “Although I agree thesixtyone’s new design has adversely affected its usability, this was probably not the way to protest that fact.”
Poopsmith’s “I’m As Mad As Hell That You Killed TheSixtyOne” also posted to the front page on Friday evening. Additionally, two more protest songs have appeared on the site since. (See the library for details.)
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Technology site Tech Crunch originally reported on thesixtyone.com and the redesign on January 23. The article has since spread throughout the Internet. Many passionate users commented on the article, giving their opinions on why the redesign did and didn’t work.
All told, there were well over 230 comments posted. Then, on January 25/26, they disappeared.
Theories were rampant that Tech Crunch had purposely removed the messages on the article, but it was quickly revealed that the site had been hacked. The issue apparently affected a broad range of information housed on their servers.
On Wednesday afternoon, Tech Crunch spokesperson Robin Wauters addressed the missing comments in the comments section of the article.
“Sorry, I’ve just now noticed all the comments here about the many comments we allegedly removed,” said Wauters. “The truth is that we were hacked twice in the past couple of days, and that as a result most of the comments are not appearing on posts published before the hack occurred.”
“We have a team working on plugging the security holes and making sure the issues aren’t exploited more, and they said they will also be reposting all comments on all posts that used to appear just fine before.”
You can find a screen capture of the comment and responses here.
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Tidbit: There’s a job posting on RentACoder.com for a music site “in the spirit of lala.com and thesixtyone.com.” In case anyone here needs a job and wants to make a competitor to T61.
Loved the bit about thinking that t61 had been hacked. That track IS somewhat hard on the brain.
THANKS SO MUCH for keeping this site going, adding links every day, and summarizing stuff in blog posts like this.
max-hearted!