RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif. -
Liz Pulliam Weston is billed as the most-read personal finance columnist on MSN.com. Her essay titled "Ditch Your Bank for a Credit Union" highlighted the differences between banks and credit unions by showing the lower loan rates, lower fees and higher interest rates on investment products. Pulliam Weston pointed out that credit unions are member owned, not for profit and that banks "hate credit unions".
"Usually, finding a credit union is as easy as visiting your employer's human resources department. If you don't work or want more options, you can use the "CU Matchup" tool at JoinACU.org," she wrote.
The site features a credit union locator and a questionnaire that includes sections on religion or ethnicity to ensure the largest number of choices for a prospective member.
Pulliam Weston lived up to her billing as thousands of Americans visited the site nearly crashing the server and causing a significant slow down for would be credit union members.
Louisiana Credit Union League Director of EFT/ATM Sales and Services Angela Gervais said league technical staff detected the slowdown around noon and alerted her to the problem. Gervais said 40% of Louisiana credit unions are listed on the site with many residents of the Bayou State using CU Matchup to learn where they can join a CU.
"It's a wonderful resource for us. It's very, very simple to use," she said. "It turns out it was the article on MSN Money. It just slowed it down, it almost shut down."
California Credit Union League Director of Information Technology John Drago said he first thought the league web site was suffering from a denial of service attack, an intentional surge in messages or traffic designed to slowdown or crash a particular site.
Drago said in effect, the affect of the traffic generated by the MSN Money article did serve as a denial of service attack, it just wasn't malicious in nature.
"It was not a crash. It was a major slowdown," Drago said. "It was quite a significant difference."
Drago said some consumers trying to access the site had to be turned away and many received a "server busy" message, but the website traffic had returned to normal by the end of business hours June 13. "It was good to have that kind of attention," he said.
For info: www.joinacu.org.
How Publicity Sparked Activity
Visitors (average day): 545
Visitors (msn.com story): 8,964
Hits (average day): 5,143
Hits (msn.com story): 87,935
Daily Searches (average) 300
Daily Searches (msn.com story) 6,054
