How do you generate one thousand times more traffic than usual and bring your hosting server to a grinding halt?

Go Viral!

I put together a fake news story last week and it seems someone posted it to Reddit.com and then the fun began!  I got a phone call from my host saying that the website might be under a DoS attack because it was receiving 100+ http requests per second!!  Needless to say my poor shared hosting account crashed and my host was working hard to keep it live!

Here are the results so far:

The website usually gets 200-300 visits a day.  The 86k requests I could not serve kinda sucks but I was not really expecting this to go as viral as it did.  I will update this after the 24 hour mark.

It looks like this thing has legs!! It went viral on facebook today and fark sent lots of visitors also.

Here is the 48 hour update and it will be interesting to see how this site fares in the long-run.  Interestingly enough this website used to regularly receive 600+ visits a day from Google organic search and then it was hacked and had 100’s of hidden links placed on the home page.  I received a warning from Google, took all the spam links down but the site was never able to rank well again.

Update, Dec. 1, 2011 – Wow, I actually heard my fake news story on the radio (102.1 The Edge) on the way to work this morning!!

It seems this story has gone viral WORLD-WIDE!  The smoking gun has called it out as fake after some research (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/poop-tattoo-story-is-crap-8764319)  and same with snopes.com (http://www.snopes.com/photos/bodymods/poo.asp)

One story even called my website sketchy – but hey, it was all in good fun and it will be interesting to see how these new links effect the long-term growth of my website.  Here is a short list of website carrying this story, from Germany, Mexico, Italy, China, Nigeria and across North America!

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-world/2011/11/30/is-revenge-poo-tattoo-just-an-elaborate-internet-hoax-115875-23599827/
http://perezhilton.com/2011-11-29-a-revenge-tattoo-artist-puts-poop-tattoo-on-his-cheating-girlfriend#.TteL2bKZU8E
http://www.fox26medford.com/entertainment/kiah-online-dish-boyfriend-tattoos-poop-on-cheating-girlfriend-story,0,405638.story
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2067810/Is-Rossie-Brovent-suing-ex-boyfriend-inking-flies-buzzing-excrement-back.html?ITO=1490
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3967502/Tatt-poo-for-cheating.html
http://news.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474980838750
http://www.metro.us/newyork/Life/article/1036923–rossie-brovent-and-ryan-fitzjerald-is-this-poo-tattoo-the-ultimate-revenge-debunked
http://abovethelaw.com/2011/11/love-hurts-especially-when-your-boyfriend-brands-you-with-a-tatt-poo/
http://globalgrind.com/news/stinks-ex-boyfriend-tattoos-pile-poop-girlfriends-back-photo
http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/bizarre/Poo-54092.html
http://urbanlegends.about.com/b/2011/11/30/poo-poo-tattoo-tale-is-doo-doo.htm
http://www.northwestohio.com/news/story.aspx?id=692114#.TteRDbKZU8E
http://informe21.com/actualidad/mujer-engana-su-novio-se-venga-tatuandole-excrementos-moscas-su-espalda
http://noticias.terra.es/2011/sucesos/1129/actualidad/su-novio-se-venga-de-ella-tatuandole-un-excremento-en-la-espalda.aspx
http://www.elporvenir.com.mx/notas.asp?nota_id=544774
http://www.cnbc.com/id/45481067
http://world.huanqiu.com/roll/2011-12/2223727.html
http://www.nieuwsblad.be/article/detail.aspx?articleid=DMF20111130_028
http://dunya.milliyet.com.tr/dunyayi-aldatan-fotograf-/dunya/dunyadetay/30.11.2011/1469320/default.htm
http://www.sigmalive.com/news/perierga/442763
http://www.nownews.com/2011/11/29/91-2761900.htm
http://www.net1news.org/ex-fidanzata-con-tatuaggio-della-cacca-una-bufala.html
http://www.fakt.pl/Zrobil-dziewczynie-okropny-tatuaz-Uwaga-ohydne-zdjecie,artykuly,138238,1.html
http://noticias.r7.com/esquisitices/noticias/tatuador-faz-coco-nas-costas-da-namorada-20111126.html?question=0
http://virgula.uol.com.br/ver/noticia/inacreditavel/2011/11/28/289137-namorado-traido-tatua-coco-gigante-nas-costas-da-ex-amada
http://www.bellenews.com/2011/11/30/world/us-news/rossie-brovent-poo-tattoo-story/
http://www.nollywoodgossip.net/2011/11/30/see-what-a-man-tattooed-on-his-girlfriend%E2%80%99s-back-for-cheating-on-him-photos/
http://kissfm969.com/the-girl-with-the-poop-tattoo-story-is-a-fake/
http://www.deceptology.com/2011/11/outrageous-poop-tattoo-prank.html
http://whatsgoodington.com/2011/11/30/sadly-the-narnia-poop-tattoo-is-fake/
http://www.examiner.com/culture-events-in-chicago/a-tattoo-revenge-saga

I was told by a friend this evening that he heard about this news story on The Howard Stern Show in the morning, I just confirmed it by looking it up at http://www.marksfriggin.com/news11/11-28.htm#thu – it seems Howard and Robin talked about this on her news feature at 8:50am and then then Howard mentioned that the news was a hoax at 9:35am.

December 7, 2011 update – As you can see below the news story is still going strong but it has spread so far that I am no longer being noticed as the original source.  Traffic on my site is down to just a couple of thousand a day.

Update January 2014: Over 2 years later there is still over 13,500 results for the name Rossie Brovent!