It’s not uncommon for sites to be slammed when a major aggregation site like Digg links to them. On Twitter, there’s even a specific hashtag when popular author Neil Gaiman brings down a site. This week, we saw the same sort of thing happen in the political arena when President Barack Obama addressed the nation on the debt ceiling crisis.
“If you want a balanced approach to reducing the deficit, let your member of Congress know…If you believe we can solve this problem through compromise, send that message.”
Wherever you fall politically, the result was a tad spectacular. As the CNN article notes, 107 of 279 congressional websites were either taken down or slowed to a crawl due to the level of traffic. That’s DOS levels of traffic, but from real people.
No, not that DOS.
In an era where people decry voter apathy, it’s kind of nice to see that level of involvement. On the other hand, that these sites aren’t used to that level of traffic may actually lend strength to the apathy argument.
On a slightly related tangent, there was a report of congressional apathy this week. Assemblyman William Boyland Jr., of Brooklyn was reported to be spending time in Citiville during important votes, and also during work hours — which means it was on the taxpayer’s dime.
A virtual town hall inside town hall? Trippy.
Look, we get that people are going to check their social networking sites on their smartphones during work hours, we really do. Everyone does it. However, when your job is running a city and instead of doing it, you’re running a virtual city, it’s entirely possible that your priorities are misplaced.
whoa, cities within cities. How very Meta…