One hundred million hits

PostSecret is quite likely going to reach one hundred million hits this week. That's about fifty thousand *times* more hits than this itty bitty blog has gotten. Way to go Frank! Both for the PostSecret project and your bang-up job raising awareness of Hopeline (1-800-SUICIDE).

The Truth Laid Bear managed to pick up on the fact that PostSecret was down for about a day a few weeks ago, but has not yet picked up that it's active again. I'm disappointed.

WTF happened to PostSecret?

In case you're not familiar with PostSecret, which seems pretty hard to fathom, the wikipedia entry is here. It seems unlikely that PostSecret just went away, since Frank Warren (the guy who takes the time sift through hundreds of postcards each week and post them) has several speaking engagements coming up, and hasn't shown any indications of stopping.

If you're interested in any of the books that Frank Warren has compiled of postcard secrets, here are some links:
the original PostSecret book
The Secret Lives of Men and Women
My Secret
A Lifetime of Secrets

Part of the proceeds from the books (Frank doesn't say how much, but it's been enough to keep Hopeline afloat) go to support Hopeline, a national suicide hotline with the phone number 1-800-SUICIDE that has taken over 2 million calls. Frank has also done several fundraisers for Hopeline.

I really really hope that whoever 'nicole' is, she tried to visit PostSecret, discovered that for some reason there was nothing there, and parked it until Frank can reclaim it. It was up last night - I usually visit it on Sunday mornings because that's when the new secrets are posted, and Saturday afternoon/evening to read peoples' responses to it. It's a handy place to visit if I've been spending too much time comparing my insides to other people's outsides, too.

UPDATE:
Just got an email back from Frank. Blogger apparently took down his site, which has been around since 2005, because they decided it was a spam site. Frank is asking people to email Blogger to allow him to put PostSecret back up. I don't have an email address yet, but as soon as I hunt one down I will post it.

AND A BIT OF SNARK:
Is this part of Google's "Don't Be Evil" campaign?

ANOTHER UPDATE:
Blogger has taken down the blog that 'nicole' posted. Hopefully this is on the way to getting PostSecret back up.

Google should think about making a hefty donation to Hopeline as part of fixing this aggregious mistake.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE:
Google/Blogger has unlocked PostSecret enough to let Frank make one post, with the following message:

(Blogger sent me the following message late last night. Please email them to unlock the PostSecret Blog ASAP. PostSecret has not been fully unlocked by Blogger yet. Sorry, I know this is frustrating for you - it is frustrating for me too.)

Your blog is disabled
Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What's a spam blog?) Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive.

We received your unlock request on September 16, 2007. On behalf of the robots, we apologize for locking your non-spam blog. Please be patient while we take a look at your blog and verify that it is not spam.


posted by postsecret at 11:57 AM

I'm wondering how in the world Blogger/Google thought that a blog with over 95 million hits (yes, that's right, 95 MILLION) was a spam blog. And what does Blogger/Google have in place to make sure that once a blog is determined to be Not Spam, this doesn't happen again?

ANOTHER UPDATE:
WOOHOO!!!! Looks like it's back up. Big donation for Hopeline, Google. Clean up your reputation!