Monopoly City Streets and Other Site Overloads
High Profile Website Failures Due to Overwhelming User Use
The Hasbro/Google Maps partnership that created the online Monopoly City Streets board issued an apology to its users in September 2009 when, according to news reports, its servers struggled to cope with the 1.75M users trying to access it on launch day.
But it’s not just Monopoly City Streets that failed to accurately estimate user numbers. Here are four more high profile website crashes that have caused red faces across the World Wide Web.
Michael Jackson Memorial Website Meltdowns
Fans of Michael Jackson caused two websites to crash in the month after his death. The first to buckle just a few minutes after its launch was the website of the Staples Centre in LA where Jackson’s memorial service was held. The event planners had decided to hold a lottery so that 17,000 ordinary fans could attend the event – either in the stadium or at the Nokia theatre which had a live TV feed.
The second website to fail due to the pop star’s popularity was one set up by government officials at Los Angeles City Hall asking for donations to help pay for the cost to the City of policing and cleaning up after the Jackson Memorial Service. So many people attempted to donate to the cause straight after the memorial service that the website couldn’t cope and crashed.
Cash for Clunkers Closing Day Collapse
The US Government’s Cash for Clunkers program, whilst generally hailed as a great success, caused car dealers to feel very twitchy and frustrated in the final hours of the initiative. The Government had given a deadline for the registering of sales agreements by dealers if they were to be reimbursed with the cash.
However, on the final day of the program, so many salesmen tried to register their car sales details on the website that the computers failed to cope with the load causing the web interface to freeze. The authorities were subsequently, and reluctantly it seems, forced to concede an extension to the deadline because of the problem.
1901 Online Census Overwhelmed at Launch
In January 2002, the UK’s Public Record Office launched an electronic version of the 1901 Census for England and Wales online and seriously underestimated the potential for its popularity. The site was originally configured to cope with a peak of 1.2M users in 24 hours. However, during the first two days some 1.2M users were trying to access the site per hour, rather than per day, resulting in the website becoming overwhelmed.
Because of the inability of the system to cope with such demand, it was taken down after five days for extensive rework and design over a period of months. It finally came back fully online in November 2002 and has performed very well since. However it was the subject of an investigation by the National Audit Office to determine where things went wrong.
Sources:
- The Daily Mail online newspaper
- The Mirror online newspaper
- LA Times online newspaper
BNC101
Monopoly City Streets Struggles With Demand
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Monopoly City Streets Network Times Out
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Michael Jackson Memorial Service Website Crash
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Government Website Overload on Final Car Cash Day
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PRO 1901 Census Website Failure
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