Hallmark's Valentine's traffic exceeds their wildest expectations

I just received a note from Hallmark apologizing for the poor performance of their site on Valentine’s Day. Apparently, despite their best efforts to prepare, they got twice as much traffic as they expected.

This is good news for every in online publishing, but especially those of us who specialize in connecting people to one another. Soon, we may be hearing more about Metcalf’s Law than Moore’s Law.

We owe you an apology. First, the most important three words of this letter – WE ARE SORRY.

This Valentine’s Day, our site was up and down all day. For many of you, that meant frustration and wasted time when you were simply trying to send or retrieve an e-card.

We thought we were ready to handle a huge amount of traffic on Valentine’s Day. Obviously, we thought wrong. We were surprised by double the amount of traffic we expected. And we cringe at the disappointment we caused to some of you.

In short, we made promises to deliver that were not kept. And for those of you who experienced that disappointment, we are so sorry for any frustration we may have caused.

Rest assured this experience will serve as a lesson for us. We are now challenging our team to reevaluate every step we took to prepare for Valentine’s Day…because it wasn’t enough.

With our deepest apologies, The Hallmark.com Team

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