Jan 04
My first social media induced server crash
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I finally get it. I’ve seen the light and I’ve become a born-again social media whore!
I was starting to despair that I’d never see much benefit from social media, despite my consistent participation within the Sphinn community and my few attempts at Digg and Del.icio.us. But this morning changed all that. You see, this morning, somebody found my blog post Dumbass of the Week: the Call Center Cow and decided to Stumble It.
I’m not sure what they call it on StumbleUpon when a post goes hot or becomes popular, but it must have made front page or something because this blog went from 480 visitors yesterday to 25,321 today - I kid you not! That’s three times my traffic for the whole of December in a SINGLE DAY. 24,480 of those visits were from StumbleUpon. Even my feed subscriber list increased by 120 - the most new subscribers I’ve ever had in a single day.
The resulting traffic exceeded my server’s bandwidth limit and shut down my site, but luckily I noticed within a few minutes and managed to double my bandwidth allowance to cope with the gridlock. I still don’t know who stumbled my post but THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! My faith in social media has been restored and I’ve been given fresh incentive for blogging.
Praise the lord blog and pass the keyboard!
Popularity: 46%
January 4th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/www.ask-kalena.com/personal/dumbass-of-the-week-the-call-center-cow
That is about your blog post
This is the profile of the person who stumbled you:
http://spostareduro.stumbleupon.com/
January 4th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
“I still don’t know who stumbled my post”
I took a look Kalena, and you have spostareduro to thank for that
http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/www.ask-kalena.com/personal/dumbass-of-the-week-the-call-center-cow/ shows you the stumblers
January 4th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Heh. Sorry for the repetitive information there… Chris’s comment was showing at the time I submitted mine
January 4th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Ah! My favorite student. Thanks for tracking that down, I’m off to thank her.
January 4th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Revisiting your viral media explosion. The comments on stumbled upon weren’t particularly very positive the couple that are there. I wonder what made it go viral? I am perplexed. In a constructive way… you have many more articles that are much better than that one. In fact I just felt that you were just ranting and explaining your frustration everyone experiences. To be very candid I just didn’t think it was very good. Out of all the tremendous things you have written why did this one go viral?
It is great that it did. Congratulations the only time I have done such a thing is by uploading something to the server and causing a shut down. I am envious now!
January 4th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Congrats Kalena! Way to go.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
@ Chris - Yes I agree. It’s the same with Sphinn. The strangest things go hot and the ones I put my heart and soul in flounder. I think everyone likes a laugh and things that make them smile tend to attract more votes. Thanks for the Ajax edit comments suggestion, but for historical reasons, I’d prefer my users didn’t have the ability to edit their comments.
@ Manish - thanks!
January 4th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Helloooooooooooo my favorite SEO chick! My tutor, mentor and now friend (gosh, I feel so cheap and used lol)
I’m glad that you had bandwidth blow out! You deserve it.
I have learned so much from your lessons and your Sphinn friends (now my friends as well) and other networks.
Have the best new year ever!
January 4th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
There she is, Girl Wonder herself. Happy New Year Kimberly! Straight to the top of the class!
January 5th, 2008 at 2:26 am
Wow, that’s some great traffic Kalena, congratulations.
January 5th, 2008 at 4:55 am
[…] got her fisrt success with social networking sites, My first social media induced server crash. This post once again confirms the high deliver ability of social networking sites. If you apply […]
January 5th, 2008 at 4:56 am
The key message is the new subscriptions you received - like other flash-traffic generators (including pay-for-click services), stumbleupon’s traffic flood isn’t necessarily useful or usable traffic. Our SEO business site was stumbled in the category “open source” - we got a lot of traffic, but for no obvious reason we could discern (maybe it was the pleasing green we used, very copacetic). Didn’t generate any new business, either, from the random crowd ostensibly looking for open-source projects to join. Sounds like your stumble was well worth it!
January 5th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
keep the good work
January 5th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
[…] - It isn’t much of a debate as much as controversy I met a new social media friend and rising blog star that goes by the handle Spostareduro and authors the blog Learning SEO […]
January 6th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Wow! That’s impressive. I’ve gotten spikes of 15K from BoingBoing, but I think the most I’ve seen from StumbleUpon is about 1K. Good job!
January 6th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
It’s called ‘making the Buzz page’ I guess which I how I would describe it.
Congratulations, it was a great post
January 9th, 2008 at 1:09 am
This is often referred to as “The slashdot effect”. The expression originates from the site /. (slashdot) which is basically news for nerds. Since the site have thousands of readers, some popular articles (or personal blogs) about something these geeks find interesting can get thousands, ten-thousands or hundred-thousands of visits in a very short time. Many of the bloggers certainly don’t have the servers to cope with that, and the site (or even the entire server) goes down.
So, even though the link wasn’t actually posted on /. I gues I can still congratulate you. You’ve been slashdotted!
Chris. . . .
January 10th, 2008 at 9:30 am
[…] looked much to any other place. Other than Sphinn and vIndianz. But one fine day I saw this post from Kalena which crashed her site, I decided to move […]
February 7th, 2008 at 8:14 am
I think the most I’ve seen from StumbleUpon is GREAT Good job!
July 18th, 2008 at 4:51 am
Wow Kalena, I just loved your post. Your excitement at this server crash shines through, and I found myself wishing for one. I am so excited and happy for you. Keep going.
Vidyut