Editing Flash Crowd (section)

==Similar references==
On the [[World Wide Web]], a similar phenomenon can occur, when a web site catches the attention of a large number of people, and gets an unexpected and overloading surge of traffic.  This usage was first coined by John Pettitt of Beyond.com in 1996.{{citation needed|date=April 2024}} Multiple other terms for the phenomenon exist, often coming from the name of a particular prominent, high-traffic site whose normal base of viewers can constitute a flash crowd when directed to a less famous website. Notorious examples include the "[[Slashdot effect]]",<ref name="BuyyaPathan2008">{{cite book|last1=Buyya|first1=Rajkumar|last2=Pathan|first2=Mukaddim|last3=Vakali|first3=Athena|author3-link=Athena Vakali|title=Content Delivery Networks|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=p2C2cZkTrmsC&pg=PA274|access-date=19 July 2016|date=2008-07-26|publisher=Springer Science & Business Media|isbn=9783540778875|pages=274–}}</ref> the "Instalanche" (when a smaller site gets links by the popular blog [[Instapundit]]), or a website being "[[Fark]]ed" or [[Drudge Report|Drudged]] (where the target site is crashed due to the large number of hits in a short time).