Noun

1. The sudden increase in popularity of an Internet site or resource due to an event or link from another site.
   • 1971, Larry Niven, Flash Crowd

     The mall riot was the first successful riot in twenty years. “The police can get to a riot before it's a riot,” said McCord. “We call them flash crowds, and we watch for them.”

   • 2004 December 18, Johan Pouwelse, “The BitTorrent P2P file-sharing system”, The Register http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/18/bittorrent_measurements_analysis/.

     We now focus on the system's reaction to the sudden popularity of a single (new) file. This phenomenon is also called the flashcrowd effect.