Earthling

Note: The below is an archived entry from Earthling, formerly EarthLink's official blog. The blog itself has been decommissioned and is no longer updated, and comments are trackbacks are no longer accepted.

I saw this little note atop my Flickr.com user page this morning:

The full text reads:

Hey! Is Flickr acting weirder than normal for you? We see it too! Please, check this FlickrBugs thread for updates.

Couple of notes about what I love about this:

You can't miss it. Without shouting at you, I bet it gets the attention of the vast majority of people who pass through the login screen of Flickr. In fact, even if you don't log in, you still see it at the top of all of Flickr's user pages.
But it's not alarmist. It doesn't tell me that the sky is falling or to go away for a while. It does a good job of putting the issue neatly in context.
It talks like a person. It's conversational enough for it to fit the context it's in, without sacrificing the information it's trying to convey. It makes you think there are actual people working at Flickr.
Again, you can't miss it. Flickr *wants* you to know that their site might be acting funky and why, rather than hoping you don't notice. I like Yahoo a lot, but they're a big company, and it's pleasing to me that Flickr has been able to maintain this open, conversational approach to user communication even as part of a big big company.
It links to more information.There's a message board thread about bugs that both Flickr staff and users are invited to contribute to. It's nice to have a dependable place to go for answers, rather than having to rely on outside blog commenters who are doing their best to piece together as complete a picture as they can as outsiders.
They don't over- or undercommit. The staff message at the top of the bugs thread ends with "Sorry everyone! We know this is totally weird. We're on it, and will resolve it asap." It's an apology for the user frustration, it's believable, and it's human.

Runner-up: FeedBurner.com.

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