Spun

Frederico’s spot-on when he says that Flickr’s frequent error messages are a lot easier to deal with because they seem human:

How many times have you seen Flickr fail? I have seen it happen quite a few times, but something behind the “Flickr is having a massage” message, shown whenever someone tripped on a few cables, keeps me comfortable - it lets me know my photos and those of my friends, are in good hands. It will all be okay, even when something has clearly gone wrong.

I like Flickr’s (and I paraphrase), “Whoah Nelly, hold your clicks! The server’s running HOT right now!” error message which is WAY more effective than “HTTP 500 Internal Server Error.” Just goes to show a little editorial goes a long long way.