When Marketo went offline, self-described ‘geek’ rescued domain after their own failure to renew

Oops.

Or the corporate equivalent of that expression probably was uttered today at the headquarters of marketing tech giant Marketo, when its domain apparently expired.

It might well have been followed by a collective “thank you” to one Travis Prebble, a senior applications engineer in State College, Pennsylvania.

The Twitter feeds of both parties tell the basics of this story arc.

Early this morning, Prebble tweeted the following:

@marketo Hey, did anybody notice Marketo failed to renew https://t.co/bvVAcjInc9? We have some sites down because the munchkin.js fails.

— Travis Prebble (@TravisPrebble) July 25, 2017

Marketo’s Twitter feed, shortly after Prebble’s initial post:

We are aware of the issue with the https://t.co/9m4s5tpfDW domain and are working quickly to resolve it. We apologize for any inconvenience.

— Marketo (@marketo) July 25, 2017

Then:

I renewed your domain @Marketo . Hopefully things will be back up soon. pic.twitter.com/GIJaK7dekW

— Travis Prebble (@TravisPrebble) July 25, 2017

Prebble noted the site remained down, although he had renewed the domain on his credit card. “No DNS changes that I’ve made,” he wrote, noting that he didn’t buy the domain but only renewed it.

Eventually, the site returned to normal. CEO Steve Lucas — to his credit — tweeted:

Resolving DNS issues re: our site and I profusely apologize to everyone. No excuses, just fixing. More news from @marketo and @MarketoCares

— Steve Lucas (@nstevenlucas) July 25, 2017

Even in the era of Donald Trump, it appears that Good Samaritans still exist. Prebble — who has now changed his identifier on Twitter to “Parking meter fairy for domain names” — only wants to add this event to his resume, in case he ever applies for a job at Marketo:

No negotiation required. Just want my Marketo back up. :) I will, however, add "domain renewal" to my CV if I ever apply for a @Marketo job.

— Travis Prebble (@TravisPrebble) July 25, 2017

Late this afternoon, Marketo sent us this statement:

Early this morning, all Marketo web domains experienced access issues with our DNS that affected all Marketo instances. It did not affect product performance. We acted immediately to remediate the issue. While the propagation of the Marketo domain started early this morning, completion will vary depending upon local propagation settings. We expect most customers to have access to the Marketo.com domains shortly.

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About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.