As DomainGang.com is currently going through a 2nd round of Friday morning visitors, the story behind yesterday’s traffic onslaught from Digg and other sources is permanently etched onto our domain system logs.
In a nutshell, our parody of PETA’s alleged internal press release that the domain name, Sex.com should be acquired by them in order to better promote their campaign – an apparent parody of its own – was used in serious context on Mashable. That article, which identified the parody but did not massage its impact on the minds of “skimmers” that don’t actually comprehend what they read, caused a second round of tweets and the eventual digg that brought even more traffic to DomainGang.com
Having sustained more than 7,500 unique visits from Digg.com alone and more than 24,000 pageviews during the remainder of the day, our server took the hour-long barrage of traffic like a champ; breaking the previous daily record by more than three times as much. Over the following five to six hours, traffic subsided to more comfortable levels, but it’s already at more than twice the normal levels for a Friday – and it’s not even noon yet.
Currently, the Mashable article has been replicated dozens of times by various other social media, either in context or in whole (scraped). This is a glaring display of both an alarming and a humorous side of today’s electronic journalism: writers don’t take enough time to cross-check any facts.
In fact, people fail to identify the framework of what they are reading. They quickly copy & paste, tweet and regurgitate, replicate like a parrot imitates human voices. No research and little – if any – creativity are employed into the subject of their writing. Quick annotation or bookmarking systems like Digg cause trends and redirect the flocking of visitors to destinations unknown, without holding the hand of the surfing lemmings.
In November, another article by our staff editor, Giovanni ‘Crazee’ Mossolini caused a similar traffic surge. This time, Giovanni outdid herself in converging current events with a caustic sense of humor and producing a fun piece that definitely promoted Sex.com and its now canceled sale more than any other attempt by its owners 😀
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Have a wonderful Friday everyone and keep on domaining!
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