Live Labs Launch Photosynth Learns Lesson

Today Microsoft's Live Labs launched Photosynth the really cool online photo compilation service that allows you to string together a set of photos into a 3-D view.  They learned really quickly how cool the site really was because before noon eastern time the site was rendered inoperable.  One of the guys from the team was actually quoted as saying that they were "nervous" after completing testing of the site.  They made every attempt to plan for the amount of traffic they would see after launch.  The lesson here is that no matter how much testing you do you may never be able to plan for a huge spike in traffic, especially on day one.

I saw this really often when working in the hosting industry.  A customer when create a lot of buzz and the capacity didn't always handle demand.  I particularly remember a customer who built custom motorcycles and had a popular reality show based on their business realizing that the shared web server they were on was not enough to handle the load brought on by increased popularity. Then there was the company that wanted run ads during the Superbowl but was not sure if their server farm would be enough.

Bottom line, sometimes its hard to plan for a web site that becomes an overnight sensation.  But rest assure these guys have learned a valuable lesson.  I am sure that they would have planned for 10 times the capacity if they had it all to do over again.  Photosynth is still a really cool site and I can't wait to start creating my own "synths"