Valentine's Day Traffic Shuts Some Sites DownValentine's Day Traffic Shuts Some Sites Down

As expected, Valentine Day's day greetings-senders, both the loved and the lovelorn, flooded greeting card Web sites, knocking some of them out for short periods. But unexpectedly, surfers seeking information on Vice President Dick Cheney's accidental shooting of a Texas lawyer also flooded Web sites.

Leading Valentine's Day Web site Hallmark.com was knocked out, particularly in the early part of the day Tuesday. "For those who did manage to get through response times were in excess of 20 seconds from high-bandwidth connections," Web performance measurement provider AlertSite reported.

At about 9 a.m. AlertSite observed that the Hallmark site began experiencing problems with slow uploads. Even so, the metrics provider said access to the site went better this year than in the past. Other slow sites were VictoriasSecret.com and Sephora.com.

Meanwhile, Vice President Dick Cheney's accidental shooting of Texas lawyer Harry Whittington generated a 300 percent increase in Web activity, according to Lycos Inc.

One site that received heavy traffic was that of humorist Andy Borowitz. He reported a mock plan to issue a color-coded "Cheney Alert" to "warn Americans if an attack by Vice President Dick Cheney is imminent."