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Top 13 Website Crashes of 2010?

I was doing a bit of research for an article and I started compiling a list of high-profile website crashes in 2010.
Pingdom have published a list here - http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/major_internet_incidents_and_outages_of_2010.php as have Alertsite here - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/29/the-biggest-web-outages-o_n_801943.html
But I decided to compile my own list from a more UK-centric perspective and came up with my “baker’s dozen” below.
# Site Date News Link
1 National Rail Jan-10 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/05/rail_chaos/
2 Outnet Apr-10 http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/blog/2010/apr/16/outnet-sale-website-crash
3 Apple (iPhone 4 Launch) Jun-10 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1286756/Apple-iPhone-4-pre-order-Website-crashes-new-iPhone-goes-sale.html
4 ITV.com (World Cup Video) Jun-10 http://www.webuser.co.uk/news/top-stories/473033/itv-player-problems-cause-world-cup-frustration
5 HMV  Jul-10 http://www.webuser.co.uk/news/top-stories/492844/hmv-music-download-site-crashes
6 France.fr Aug-10 http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/296137
7 Facebook Sep-10 http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/11403897
8 UK Ticket websites (Take That Tickets) Oct-10 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11650620
9 Mastercard (Wikileaks) Dec-10 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8189007/WikiLeaks-hackers-crash-Mastercard-site-with-cyber-attack.html
10 PayPal (Wikileaks) Dec-10 http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/security-management/2010/12/06/paypal-hit-by-ddos-attack-after-spurning-wikileaks-40091063/
11 Tesco Clubcard Dec-10 http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/shopping/2010/12/anger-as-tesco-website-crashes-on-clubcard-deadline-day
12 BA.com Dec-10 http://www.cio.co.uk/news/3254329/ba-website-down-amid-snow-chaos
13 Twitter (Fail Whale) Multiple http://status.twitter.com/
If you review the related articles the #fails seem to fall into 4 major categories
(1) Underestimating demand on launch e.g. HMV or France.fr. This could be either a marketing #fail (by grossly underestimating the traffic) or a tech #fail by just not building a site that could handle the expected traffic.  Maybe they should have read my whitepaper before launching “55 Killer questions before you launch your new website”
(2) Demand surge exceeding capacity & scalability – e.g. ticket sites, Apple, Tesco Clubcard, BA.com, Outnet, National Rail. Perhaps they should read this post “Dealing with Traffic Spikes”
(3) “Enemy Action” – DDoS attacks or other hacking activity e.g. PayPal & Mastercard re Wikileaks “Hacktivism”.
(4) Poor capacity planning – just not scaling fast enough e.g. Twitter’s repeated failures under load.
How did you site cope in 2010 – did you fall into either of these 4 categories?
Are there any more we can add to the list?
Feedback in the comments section please!

Comments

Anonymous said…
Your link is accidentally appended to your Site Confidence webmail.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/major_internet_incidents_and_outages_of_2010.php
4:07 pm
The Ops Mgr said…
Whoooppss! So much for my blog editorial checking process! Fixed now.
4:22 pm
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