Are Justin Bieber fans the equivalent of a DDoS?

Justin Bieber, who I didn't know could even drive, took a picture of traffic in Los Angeles.

Simultaneously, Instagr.am's servers start to blow up. The first thing that comes to mind is a DDoS attack. Well, Instagr.am's servers were put through so much stress, because a large fraction of Justin Bieber's 11+million followers went to Instagr.am to sign up and like the photo.

Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom confirmed that the rapid stress on the servers was due to Justin Bieber's fans. "Bieiber is gaining 50 followers a minute, and one comment every 10 seconds" Systrom says.

Instagram is a popular service - it hit 5 million users last month, and some of those 5 million users are celebs. After Justin Biebers wanna-be DDoS attack, they are just shy of 7 million users. Instagram says that this wasn't a publicity stunt, and they are happy that Justin Bieber is using the service.