WebProNews

If a company's big enough, a site outage lasting only five minutes is an embarrassing issue.  "Over 12 hours" is pretty terrible, then, and this is the amount of time for which Blockbuster Online ceased to work.

Throughout most of Monday, Blockbuster Online proved impossible to navigate, and by way of explanation, one error message cited "technical difficulties."  Another note mentioned "changes to the site" and "an ever better Blockbuster experience," but no differences were noticeable when normal operations resumed.

Users were understandably upset.  "Blockbuster Online? More Like Blockbuster Offline," MG Siegler titled one story.  He later added, "Blockbuster is done - they should sell the name, at this rate it might end up being worth more than the actual company."

Of course, as if to prove onlookers wrong, Blockbuster's stock somehow managed to gain $0.08 on Monday, but the market may be less forgiving today; after hours trading has already caused a dip of $0.19.  Netflix's stock is also losing value, yet it's come out of the situation looking quite nice by comparison.

Meanwhile, official explanations or apologies from Blockbuster (beyond the two conflicting error messages) are still MIA.