This article is full of horrible bits, and that quote is just the bit that stands out the most. The link from that quote is to Quora, with only one random guy

This article is full of horrible bits, and that quote is just the bit that stands out the most. The link from that quote is to Quora, with only one random guy holding forth with an opinion about Friendster. Not exactly authoritative. But even if it were, the Quora answer is not even close to implying that AJAX had a consequence on server load (it suggests that AJAX makes for better UX). The link about "friendster is too slow" links to... a story about a change of CEO at Friendster.... with no reference to website performance at all? Wtf? The "$15 a month" link and the "so easy" link, while they do mention AWS/EC2 IASS, are only peripherally connected to it. They're about caching Wordpress, i.e. automagically converting your dynamic-content webapp into a static-content website, and have nothing to do with elastic scaling or any of the other really interesting aspects of AWS/EC2. It's weird, because it's like there was a vaguely reasonable (but fluff-weight) article here, that someone pissed all over and ruined. I generally enjoy the pieces I read at the Atlantic... now I'm having that experience of wondering if any of them had any truth at all to them.