One of my favourite sites is Digg, a sort of Survivor or Big Brother for news, where the best stories get voted to stay on the island, and the worst get dugg down. The original Digg was Slashdot, but Digg adopted Web 2.0 and various other features which caused Digg to take over.
Digg is known for 'The Digg Effect' which cripples underpowered web servers whenever a popular story links to them. I am still getting hits from the few stories I submitted a few months ago.
Today Kevin Rose, one of the founders of Digg, announced that they are removing postings that announce a hex key used for breaking high-definition DVD protection, due to a legal notice (from one of their sponsors, no less). Almost immediately the site was flooded with stories about this, and every single Top 10 topic involved Freedom of Speech and this story.
Usually popular stories get 1000-2000 digs to get into the Top 10. DIGG: What's Happening with HD-DVD Stories? is #1 at 6630 diggs, over twice the usual traffic.
Digg seems to be hit by it's own Digg Effect right now... and the top story on Slashdot is how Digg is trying to suppress the revolt.
Am I going to post the hex key? No way! Not that most people would even know what to do with it.
1001111110010001000100000010100111 010111010011100011100000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Like the Digg Effect, the Wal-Mart Effect can also cause problems with traffic, namely walk-in traffic in a competing store.
By dropping the price of the 42" flat-panel TV to $998, they caused an onslaught of new purchasers to buy into the flat-panel revolution, and, in the words of one of their competition:
"The tube business and big-screen business just dropped off a cliff," says Stuart Rose, chief executive officer of Rex Stores. "We expected a drop-off, but nowhere near the decline that we had."
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Extra/WalMartEffectStrikesAgain.aspx
Futureshop, Best Buy, Circuit City, and many others will probably suffer because of Wal-Mart's guerilla pricing strategy.
Now when will the HD Projectors come down to $998 - that's what I'm talking about...
