Of course, the best result from all this was that we got lots of traffic to Herd It and collected some great data. Many sites have talked about the surge in traffic - and website crashes - that results from being Slashdotted but Herd It fared pretty well, once I suspended the huge, inefficient MySQL query I use to calculate scoreboards. Alas, all these new users were fleeting... such is life. Looking at Herd It's Google Analytics, there was a big bump on days 1 and 2 (while we were on the homepage) which dropped of steadily over the subsequent week until we were back to just about our original level. This must be a phenomenon that is seen with many one-shot promotions (news stories, price drops, superbowl ads) and inspired me to coin the term "The Slashdot Shark".
Without warning, a huge fin rises from the depths, strikes and then disappears, leaving carnage and destruction in its wake!
