If You're Going To Plan Online Doorbusters, Shouldn't You Plan Ahead For The Traffic?

from the just-saying... dept

Last week we noted that plenty of online retailers were preparing online "doorbuster" deals for the long Thanksgiving weekend, designed to mimic the sales that brick-and-mortar stores have to get people lined up and shoving each other aside for some super cheap item. However, reminiscent of holiday shopping seasons in the early days of the internet boom, it appears that most of these sites didn't actually prepare very well for the expected traffic influx. Wal-Mart, Disney and Amazon were all knocked offline at times due to their promotions. Spokespeople for the various sites claim the usual "higher than expected" traffic surges, but considering how much hype they put behind their promotions, that seems hard to believe. While Amazon's downtime wasn't all that long, it certainly doesn't help the company's more recent efforts to set itself up as the reliable platform on which others can build new web apps.

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