It seems that this weeks server upgrade hasn’t fully solved the login issue we ran in to last week and login is failing for some users right now.  We are working to fix the problem as quickly as possible.

Update (7/29/2010 11:40am EST): We are still working to fix this.  Some people are able to log in or launch in local mode while others are getting stuck so it may take a few restarts.  We apologize for the temporary inconvenience.  We’ll be up and running again as soon as possible.

Update 2 (729/2010 5:00pm EST): The good news is that the server cluster is online and everything is working fine.  During this down time most existing users have been connecting in “local mode” and Digsby will now resynchronize your preferences as it reconnects to our servers.  The bad news it that we aren’t sure why the entire cluster would crash every time we brought it online.  We’ve narrowed the cause down quite a bit but we are still working to figure out the exact cause so we can fix it before this happens again.  Thank you all for your support and we apologize for the temporary inconvenience.

Update 3 (7/30/2010 8:50am EST): We are, unfortunately, having server issues again this morning.  We’re working to fix the problem now and also investigating the underlying cause so we can put a permanent solution in place.  For existing users, Digsby will take about 15-20 seconds to try to log in and then it will launch in local mode (bringing up locally cached account and preference info).  We’ll keep you posted!

Update 4 (7/30/2010 6:30pm EST): Everything has been stable for several hours, which is a good sign! There are some stop gap measures in place which we hope will curtail the issue until a more permanent solution is implemented.

We will be doing scheduled server upgrades this Tuesday from 12:00am EST through 6:00am EST. There may be sporadic periods during which account registration will be unavailable and there may very brief periods where login is unavailable. We will keep updating this blog post as we run through the procedure tomorrow night.

Update 1 (7/27/2010 1:40am EST): The coffee is flowing and we are going! The upgrade is in progress right now. User registration and account password resetting is currently disabled.

Update 2 (7/27/2010 5:45am EST): We finished upgrading the database servers. We are now migrating all the login servers to the new database. User registration and account password resetting is still disabled. Login is currently unaffected.

Update 3 (7/27/2010 6:15am EST): We are starting the final phase of the upgrade. Login may be slow or unavailable for the next 20-ish minutes.

Update 4 (7/27/2010 6:50am EST): Everything is coming back online now. Login may be a bit slow for the next few minutes as everyone reconnects but we should be all set unless unexpected issues arise. User registration and password resetting are also back to normal. Thanks for your patience!

We’re having server issues that are preventing some people from logging in.  We are working on resolving the problems now and will update you as soon as things are back to normal.

Update (1:30pm EST): Everything is back to normal.

We’re very excited to announce that Digsby crossed another major milestone.  We now have over 2 million users managing more than 5 million accounts and exchanging over 25 million IMs each day using Digsby!  We think that’s pretty amazing.

We couldn’t have done it without you!  Every day we’re amazed at the quality feedback and passionate support you give us.   Thank you!  We want to take this opportunity to give back and show the world what 2 million Digsbies can do.  We’re excited to announce Digsby Donates!

What is Digsby Donates?

Digsby Donates is a small browser plugin that helps support Digsby development and allows us to make a donation on your behalf whenever you shop at one of over 1,800 participating merchants.

How does it work?

After installing the browser plugin, a small bar will appear for 10 seconds whenever you visit a participating merchant’s website letting you know that part of your purchase amount will be donated to charity.

Does it cost me anything?

Not a penny. Each of the participating merchants has an affiliate program that pays Digsby a portion of the purchase amount for encouraging you to complete the transaction.

Who gets the donation?

We couldn’t decide on a single charity so we picked 12 top rated charities to support.  Each month a different charity will get the donation from that month’s affiliate fees.  For example, this month’s donation will go to the American Red Cross to help victims in Haiti.

How can I help?

For more information check out the wiki.  Please help us make the world a better place by downloading Digsby Donates:

We’re getting reports of users not being able to log in to their MSN accounts.  This is happening in Digsby and in Windows Live Messenger so it looks like their servers are down.  We’ll keep an eye on this and let you know when it looks like service has been restored.

Update 1 (2/16/2010 1:25pm EST): Service appears to have been restored by the folks at Microsoft.

We moved the blog commenting system over to Disqus to provide a richer user experience.   Major differences you will see are:

• You can now reply to comments and the replies are threaded making them more like a conversation
• You can ‘like’ comments
• You can comment with your Facebook, Twitter, OpenID, Yahoo, or Disqus account to tie them to your real identity
• All the comments you make on blogs that use Disqus are available in one central place
• Easily post your comment back to Facebook or Twitter to share it with friends

With over 200 submissions and hundreds of fan votes, the Digsby Twitter Background contest has ended and we are excited to announce the winners!  Before we do though, we just want to say how amazed we are by the talent of our fans.  It was a very difficult decision.  There were some incredible submissions so we’re highlighting the top 10 on our Spread the Word page along with buttons and banners that you can place on your blog or website to promote Digsby.

Without further ado, here are the winners of the Digsby Twitter Background Contest:

1st place (by @letusdare2think)

2nd place (by @wemps)

3rd place (by @Jerlyn)

The winners will receive Amazon Gift Cards, Digsby T-Shirts and Digsby USB Drives!  We can’t thank you enough for your participation and hard work.  Be sure to keep a look out for more fantastic contests and check out all 10 top picks on the Digsby Spread the Word page!

We noticed our Twitter background page was getting kind of stale and we wanted to add some personality to it.  So, we thought we’d give our fans the chance to show their love for Digsby and win something in return. We’re excited to launch the Digsby Twitter Background Contest!  Everyone is encouraged to participate in the contest and submit their entries.  Here are the details:

When can I start?

• You can start submitting today! The contest will start from November 2nd, 2009 and will end on November 23rd, 2009.

Where do I go to submit?

• We’re using Twitter Background Gallery to make it easy to vote and view everyone’s submissions. Head on over and start start submitting!
• Please Note: After submitting your design please keep your original files safe and secure. The winners will need to send the original files to Digsby for use. We will contact the winners with details.

Who gets to choose the winner?

• Winner will be chosen by the Digsby team (with strong emphasis given to votes)

What do I win?

• 1st Place: $100 Amazon Gift Card, Digsby T-Shirt, Stickers, Digsby USB Drive
• 2nd Place: $50 Amazon Gift Card, Digsby T-Shirt, Stickers, Digsby USB Drive
• 3rd Place: $25 Amazon Gift Card, Digsby T-Shirt, Stickers, Digsby USB Drive

Official Rules:

• To win you must be following @Digsby on Twitter (so we can let you know you’ve won)
• Submit as many entries as you want
• All artwork must be original
• You may use our logo found at the Digsby site  http://www.digsby.com/contact/
• Digsby team chooses winners (with strong emphasis given to votes)
• By submitting your design, you release your rights and give Digsby full use of the design
• We reserve the right to make changes at any time
• We will contact winners for their original file
• All entries will be viewable by the public

Things to Keep in Mind:

• People will be viewing our page in a variety of screen resolutions so having something that fits well across multiple resolutions is a plus.
• Must be upload-able to Twitter so test it on your twitter profile first.
• We’ll feature good designs throughout the competition by tweeting them from @digsby.

Help Us Spread the Word!

The more the merrier! Tell your friends, retweet it, post on walls, sing it on the rooftops.  Just make sure to submit.  We’re very excited to show off what our fans can came up with!

Digsby Twitter Background Contest

We are bringing down the widget servers for scheduled maintenance in about 20 minutes.  Total downtime should be less than one hour.  Logging in to Digsby and all other functionality will not be affected.

Update (10/13/09 6:00pm EST): All systems back online.

When we first launched Digsby, Twitter was not nearly as dynamic as it is today.  It has grown to become more than just a place for you to say what you’re doing.  When you reply to a tweet, you aren’t just commenting on an isolated newsfeed item – you’re participating in an ongoing global conversation.  We feel that most other Twitter clients don’t reflect this in their design.

Today, we are embracing this shift with a completely redesigned Twitter implementation in Digsby that is unlike any Twitter client you’ve seen.  Our goal is to make Twitter feel less like a timeline and more like a conversation.  Highlights include:

• Single column user interface that doesn’t take up your whole screen
• Tweets are shown in chronological order so you read the conversation as it happens instead of seeing the tail end first and reading it backwards
• Digsby keeps track of unread counts but you never have to mark tweets as read. Digsby does it for you automatically
• Whenever you open the Twitter window, Digsby brings you right where you left off so you can continue reading the conversation without missing a tweet
• Conquer information overload by filtering groups of users out of the main timeline so it is the most useful view and not the most cluttered
• Snapshot view of recent tweets is still available in the Infobox along with the added ability to reply and retweet right inline
• Reply and Retweet right from popup notifications so you can stay on task and stay in the loop
• Automatic URL shortening when you paste links and automatic photo uploading when you paste pictures or screenshots

We will be showing off the new functionality at DEMOfall09 later today.  You can watch the live demo at 9:50AM PST / 12:50PM EST – http://demo.com/

The rules of DEMO state that we need to make our public debut at the conference.  That means we couldn’t alpha test the Twitter implementation as much as we usually test releases so expect a few bugs. We’ll work diligently over the next couple weeks to iron out all the bumps and make it into the solid product you’ve come to expect!

If you run into any trouble, use Help > Send Bug Report to submit a diagnostic log and include steps on how to consistently reproduce the bug whenever possible.

Let us know what you think in the comments and spread the word!

Update 1 (9/22/2009 9:30pm PST): We are working on fixing a crash that happens on older AMD and Pentium 3 processors.  We’ll push out an auto-update as soon as it is fixed.  Also,  thank you all for the wonderful feedback about usability.  We want to make Digsby the best Twitter client in the world and we’ll start making iterations to tweak the things we got wrong and build on the things we got right!  Keep the feedback coming and please let us know how it feels after using it for a day or so.

Update 2 (9/23/2009 8:30am PST): We are working fixing two login issues.  First, if you are trying to log in with your email address instead of your username that will fail.  If you change it to log in with your username this will bypass the issue.  Second, if you have special characters in your password, it will fail.  Changing your password temporarily while we fix this will bypass the issue.

Update 3 (9/23/2009 2:55pm PST): Thank you to everyone for the wonderful feedback.  We just push the first update to the new Twitter implementation with the following changes:

• Fixed an issue that caused Digsby to crash for people running old AMD and Pentium 3 processors
• Fixed a bug that caused users to get “Failed to Connect” when logging in with their email address in stead of their username
• Fixed a bug that caused users to get “Failed to Connect” if they had special characters in their passwords
• Brought back some old functionality to the infobox like seeing your most recent tweet and the ability to tweet from it
• Added ability to hide unread counts in infobox and tray icon so if you don’t use the full featured “IM Window Style” interface, they don’t get in your way (Click “Hide” in the infobox next to the Alerts section)
• As you scroll down in the infobox it will add more tweets to the end so you can see your entire timeline instead of just 20 items
• Added “Mark All As Read” and “New Tweet” menu items to the right click menu
• “Ctrl + C” now works in the “IM Window Style” view
• Added some contrast to the bottom of the “IM Window Style” interface so the input area where you tweet from becomes more prominent