YouTube's Mishap

If you navigate right now at the time of this posting to the popular video download site YouTube http://www.youtube.com you will find that your tube isn’t there.  A few weeks ago, MySpace went down (and lost more profiles than it’s willing to admit) because it didn’t have sufficient server redundancy and backup, and so when the power went out and killed their servers because the outside temperature was a little too warm for the West Coast power grid, users got to play PacMan.  Now, YouTube is out, though not for weather, I wouldn’t imagine.  My guess (and it’s only a guess) is that YouTube is having a slight bit of trouble with its database.  That is one of the troubles with a lot of the overnight wonders on the Internet that occurred purely by accident (rather than through thoughtful planning and engineering): They simply can’t scale.  If Starbucks only had one location in every city, chances are they wouldn’t have the volume of traffic they get every day.  The lines would be too long, and people would go somewhere else for their coffee.  The net is no different.  So these new hot sites better get their scaling act together if they want to stick around.  The key demographic of Internet user is 15-30, and they are fickle.  If you can’t deliver quickly, they are instantly attracted by the next shiny little coin they see on the road.