Target.com website crashed again yesterday

As Bob Barker reminds us, get your dogs, cats, and websites neutuered.

​Target is ready for a recession. Hell, Target is ready for a zombie apocalypse. Just don't ask Target about being ready for the 21st century.

Yesterday, Target.com crashed for the third time in the last 50 days, offering further proof Minnesota's most likely world-beaters are not quite ready for the modern world.Tuesday's public failure was a new low: The main Target.com website went down, and stayed down, for almost three whole American hours.

Perhaps this time it's a sales strategy, with Target banking on consumers literally chewing and eating their electronic devices during the website's otherwise inexplicable outage.

The crash's timing really couldn't be better, or worse, with last week's announcement that Target Corp. was releasing online president Steve Eastman into the wild, where with any luck he'll not cause CEO Gregg Steinhafel to ram his head through successive iMac monitors.

CEO Gregg Steinhafel probably does his shopping on Walmart.com anyway.

​Yesterday's regrettable but unforgettable crash, as detailed by Internet Retailer, was explained away with the corporate equivalent of a public death notice.

"We are working diligently to bring the site back online and to ensure that it is operating efficiently," a Target spokesman told IR. "Target strives to deliver an exceptional guest experience in our stores and online, and we regret the inconvenience to our guests."

The downtime lasted, in total, two hours and 45 minutes, which in the online marketing world means something like several million windows of opportunity snapping shut. Like the previous shutdowns, yesterday's came with the unfortunate image of the Target dog mascot announcing "woof! We are suddenly extremely popular..."

With whom Target has grown popular was not specified. Perhaps they mean the site's been flooded with tech geeks looking for work, or corporate grave-dancers celebrating Target's inevitable web-based obituary.

This is what happens when you hire dogs to fix stuff online. They poke their paws into all the keys at once, and everything gets jammed up. It's adorable. It's also retail death.

Like its bullseye puppy mascot, Target.com is humping thin air at this point, and really needs to get fixed.

Previously:

• Target online president leaves company after website crashes
• Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel is overpaid
• Target announces profits are up, fires union organizer