Practicum #7: FourSquare

Since I have pretty much exhausted everything FourSquare has to offer, I figure I'll talk about the recent failure of the FourSquare server. This past week, FourSquare, along with many other mobile applications and websites were not functional due to the collapse of Amazon's cloud computing.

Cloud servers through Amazon allow companies to not have to buy copious amounts of servers and maintain them. Amazon, instead, holds many many servers and enabled companies to have access to them. This is not only cheaper for the company using Amazon's servers, but it is another source of income for Amazon. However, Amazon's servers collapsed last week putting dozens of companies out of service.

The great part about Amazon's servers it that they are cheap and generally reliable. However, when an incident like this occurs, there is absolutely nothing a company like FourSquare can do for its company and customers, as it is out of there hands. All companies must assess this risk before buying into Amazon's cloud servers.