>It sounds like their sudden viral popularity created too many obligations to fulfill, but not enough to scale up sustainably. Truly victims of their own succes

>It sounds like their sudden viral popularity created too many obligations to fulfill, but not enough to scale up sustainably. Truly victims of their own success. The slashdot effect (do people use that term anymore? see also the reddit effect) for real life instead of web servers. The web creates very interesting problems in the rapid ability for demand to outstrip supply – websites were just the first examples but as stories like this illustrate, it can also be products – and Facebook, etc. show the social side where we often have too many things vying for our attention or social interaction and even compassion/things to care about. How do we smooth out those peaks and valleys? That's clearly part of what FB has tried to do with how they manage users feeds – and it's a dicey thing because that very thing has led to suspicion (rightly or wrongly)... some days it really does feel like we're at or just past that with which we are able to cope.