BoatingSF’s 15 minutes of fame
Posted 28 November 2007
I wrote my previous post, Tracking the Cosco Busan, just after I published the animation of the ship’s track as it hit the Bay Bridge. At that point, the site was already doing more than twice its usual volume just with the increased general interest in the Bay, and in current ship positions.
Over the next few days, as half a dozen major news articles mentioned my Track of the Cosco Busan animation, the site’s traffic spiked to an all-time high.
The peak day was more than 120,000 page views, which is about what the site does in a typical month.
I was pleased to find that the VPS this site runs on seemed to have enough headroom to handle the load reasonably well. I stored an alternate version of the flash movie and its data files on S3, which provided an alternative for visitors who experienced load problems.
It was also nice to see my AdSense earnings skyrocket, however briefly. Click-through rates fell to about 50% of normal, but since traffic was 30 times normal, the short-term increase was sizable. If there was this kind of interest in ship tracks ever day my boating site could be a full-time job…
Here’s some links to news articles that reference my animation of the accident: