If You Do Something Meme-Worthy, Try to Build in Some Scalability

When I read that Jeremiah got a call from Samuel L. Jackson about his forthcoming blogosphere-influenced thriller Snakes on a Plane, I wanted to find out how this happened and replicate it for all my friends and family.

So I went to the website where you can build a custom message from Samuel L. for someone you love (or hate). I spent several minutes building a message for my fiancé, entered his cell phone number, and waited for the hilarity to ensue.

His phone rang a few minutes later, but when he picked it up, there was nobody there. After about 20 seconds, a female voice came on the line to tell him, “there has been a problem, please call back later.”

Now, this is a cool idea. I have a feeling that there are already 100,000 geeks sending ridiculous messages to everyone they know. But the fact that Varitalk, the company responsible for this little promotional masterpiece, didn’t plan on enough capacity to handle all the incoming requests is sheer garbage.

If you’re going to offer any kind of service that will be popular with a geeky audience, you have to be prepared for the incessant demand for bandwidth, phone line capacity, or whatever other resources you’re using. And if you’re trying to start a meme, triple the amount of demand you anticipate.

Because the last thing you want is for your lousy execution to become a meme all its own.