"He and Gawker’s Scott Kidder then got on the phone with contacts at Google and Twitter trying to help me put the brakes on."
Of all the issues surrounding this event, this one concerns me most. Most users would not be able to escalate like this. Hosted services need to be providing this level of support to all customers 24/7/365 - or at least offer it as a premium option.
I have this - and I had reason to call it recently due to a technical issue.
In short: I'd advanced paid for a 1 year Apps account a month before the monthly billing came in to place. My credit card expired with 11 months of the contract left, but they suspended the account as that appears to be policy with new monthly billing system. I received no email asking to update the card prior to suspension. This suspended all the services it was connected to. Call centre couldn't help, account was down for 18h - they just said wait for new card to propagate.
I'm sure if a journalist from Gawker had posted this to HN it would have been resolved with more urgency.
Of all the issues surrounding this event, this one concerns me most. Most users would not be able to escalate like this. Hosted services need to be providing this level of support to all customers 24/7/365 - or at least offer it as a premium option.