Intense, Exciting, Entertaining and Exhausting. I may be describing the March Madness that is upon us, but this is not the basketball kind. It’s the “Beer Geek” kind.
A month ago, we were notified that 3 Floyds Brewing Company would be releasing the link to their Golden Tickets on their twitter account. (These Golden Tickets can be used to purchase the 2010 Dark Lord Imperial Stout on release day) With 5,000+ followers, this was definitely going to be a hectic free-for-all. Just like any other release, you never know who is going after what you want. Also, I have no clue how many tickets were available.
It was the Black Friday of Beer Tickets. You could feel the intensity as many people on twitter were discussing the impending release. What made it even more unbearable was the fact that 3 Floyds sent out a “teaser tweet” earlier in the day. (After work we’ll put the pot of golden tickets at the end of your rainbow. ~ 3 Floyds on Twitter)
Is this when the pub closes? When they’re done with brewing? Come on, what time is this gonna be? By the way, this tweet was sent at 6:36 am and finally, the tickets went on sale at 8 pm E.S.T.
The second the tweet went out I clicked on the link. I was through the first two stages and then I put in my credit card. (With plenty of credit, mind you.) There it was. The first of many. An error message. The site was bombarded and there was no turning back. “Try Again”, the button read. So I did. Again and Again and Again.
My frustration mounted. I cried for help on twitter. (Not real tears, just man tears filled with beer.) I could see from the other beer geeks that they were just as frustrated. One by one, people were posting that they got through. What was I going to do?** 49 minutes after I initially started, my card went through and my confirmation came across. “Two Tickets, Two Tickets… I got ‘em!”, I screamed. The cats ran, my wife shushed me and then real tears ran down my face. Nope, wrong again. It was beer on my face.
The frustration was there at first, but now I will be one of the few to purchase Dark Lord Beer on Dark Lord Day. I can share this beer with my friends and I can live the glory that is DLD2010.
Here is an Update! This is the amount of traffic that hit the sites Per 3 Floyds:
- Our store had 50,423 hits by 5,115 visitors in less than one hour effectively crushing Shopify’s servers
- The majority referred through twitter
- darklordday.com had 16,963 unique visitors
- 3floyds.com had 12,542 unique visitors
- #DarkLordDay and “Golden Tickets” were both trending topics on Twitter at the same time.
**The Golden Tickets sold out in 55 minutes this year. Apparently, it took 4 hours last year.
