The London Marathon is just one of those brilliant mass-spectator events that happen in London. There's something so incredible about being part of a huge crowd every now and again. So despite an epic hangover, I threw myself out of bed on Sunday to go and support some of the Dare people who were running.
Now, going there just to shout at whoever goes past is one thing, but trying to specifically spot individuals amongst the 35,000 runners is another entirely. Especially when you are dashing around the course on public transport trying to intercept them at more than one location.
So hurrah for Adidas and Marvellous Mobile. They created a simple little app where you could tap in someone's race number, and then it would tell you where they are on the course. RFID tags on their shoes clocked their progress at 5km intervals, and then projected where they should be on the course based on their current pace. Brilliantly simple. And absolutely perfect for those hunting out their runners.
Only problem, though. It didn't work. The site was accessible at 8.30am. Helpfully telling me that my chum hadn't started yet. But the moment I got on the train to intercept him around Bermondsey it died. Constant lingering, even on a 3G signal. Ultimately being treated to Adidas's very own Fail Whale. Although theirs consisted of blunt messages like "Server not responding" or "Server too busy".
I tried constantly. Sucking all the life out of my iPhone battery. But not once did it work. Although, as you can see from my screen grab it works just fine now.
Innovation is a great thing. This idea was perfect. But the sloppy execution was far from good. No doubt there are a lot of people patting themselves on the back today saying "It was SO successful, Mr Client, that we far exceeded our usage KPIs to the point where our server collapsed under all the love people were showing for our app."
Whereas in reality, there were a huge number of people being frustrated by a lame app Fail, thinking how shitty Adidas were for promising something and then failing to deliver. Such a shame. But there is a lesson to be learnt: Innovation is nothing without delivery.
Andy Kinsella did a straw poll around Glue, and it seemed it worked for a few people there. But the general sentiment on Tweets that I found was that it fell over for most people. Impossible is nothing?
The search I did for app tweets also brought up a tweet from Marvellous. I'll get in touch and see if they can enlighten us.
Good to see @adidasrunning responding to the angst though
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