If you use Bloglines to manage your growing blog habit, you might be familiar with this little guy. The Bloglines Plumber. To be fair, Bloglines doesn't break down all that much—however, each time I see this cuddly persona, I always wonder exactly what Bloglines is trying to tell me. Here are some associations I have personally when it comes to plumbing/plumbers and little "fixer uppers".
-Emergency
-Last resort
-Expensive
-Hard to fix
-More complex than it looks
-Plumber's crack (sorry!)
-Leaky stuff
-It's not fixed right—need to come back again
Well, I guess I've had some bad plumbing experiences, but maybe I'm not the only one?
I totally get what Bloglines wants to do. They know that people get irritated when service is down, so they are adding a little personality/humor to their message. Don't want to over think this, but the way we handle our service messages is important. So is the gimmick really needed?
Sometimes a simple, earnest statement that you're "on it" is all it takes. Sorry Bloglines Plumber, you're cute—but cute doesn't offer me reassurance that I'll be able to read my feeds any time soon.
