Slashdot Effect

When I woke up this morning, there were three surprising emails in my inbox, informing me about three comments someone anonymous had left on my blog. The surprising part was not just the three comments, but the fact that they actually seemed helpful.

The answer was in my list of http referrals. They were all from hardware.slashdot.org. Turns out there was this article about inscrutable logos on the back of devices, and someone linked to my article in the comments.

So well maybe that was not the real slashdot effect, but it was great to have a traffic spike that was 10% of my total traffic in a single day.

Apparently the slashdot effect follows a double peak - the first when the link was posted, and the second at around 8am EST when east coast comes in to work.

The effect seems to be petering out now, and the visit rates are falling back to my regular. But it is leaving behind a graph where the scale is stretched so bad that the usual seems insignificant. Maybe the real effect of the slashdot effect is not on the server, but the fact that it leaves you wanting for more.