NYC Marathon app and website fail: Total embarrassment

The crucial phone app and website that millions of New York City Marathon fans use to track and cheer runners experienced multiple failures and crashes Sunday as a record 60,000 participants hit the course.Users of the platform were greeted with page errors and system-failure notifications as they tried to cheer on loved ones from near and afar.The New York Road Runners, which operates the app, confirmed the issues in response to an angry X poster who dubbed the snafu a “total embarrassment for you guys and an insult to the 2m+ spectators relying on your tools to track their loved ones.”“We are working on this,” NYRR tweeted back.“In the meantime, you can track runners here,” it said, directing users to a live results page that was in working order.But frustrated fans took to social media to vent about the app and site issue.“How can you be this horrible at customer experience on your most critical day of the year? Haven’t you done this before?,” an X user fumed.A furious reddit user sniped, “They had the same issue last year too.“At what point do you not realize you need more hosting capacity when the race is coming up? It should have been obvious it would happen again.”When working properly, the app provides fans with splits and live location updates from their favorite runners, who are outfitted with tracking devices as they transverse the boroughs....