Sam Diaz has highlighted a common occurrence that took place over this past weekend, Facebook applications not responding as expected. None of these sites, not even The Washington Post was ready for the server overload that they experienced from the massive influx of users. The Washington Post experience 5-10 users per second while 30 Boxes added over 6,000 users on Sunday alone. This sounds oddly familiar like the Digg effect except it continues for days if not weeks on end.

iLike.com suffered the brunt of the Facebook effect. A whopping 46,000 users signed up in the first 20 hours. Pretty impressive considering they only play only a portion of each track you place on your profile. According to a post published on Venturebeat, iLike was desperately seeking 40 extra servers to borrow for the weekend. They should have given me a call because I have a couple hundred sitting in the back of my car. Either way, developers beware, you haven’t seen nothing until you have experienced the Facebook effect. The most amazing aspect of the Facebook effect is that it isn’t random like the Digg effect (although popularity is). Instead you are guaranteed a few thousand visitors just by adding your application. Pretty incredible!