RealAge Knows How Many
Net Hits Are Too Many

    When we reported in December on RealAge Inc., a Website that calculates users' "real age" based on lifestyle, health history and other factors, the company was preparing to launch an upgraded site, and Harper Collins was about to publish a new book by RealAge's health guru, Dr. Michael Roizen, a chair at the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine. Well, all that went smoothly. And then, on Feb. 25, came Oprah.
    "When we released the book immediately Oprah wanted Michael Roizen on the show," says President Charlie Silver. "He was on the show for 45 minutes during sweeps week and they had promoted the heck out of it."
    Oprah's fans overwhelmed the Sorrento Valley company’s Internet servers. In the two days following the show, 6 million people tried to access the site.
    "We just got slammed," says Silver. "We are still recovering. We had to rebuild our whole server network to accommodate the traffic ... Two million people got through. We are still trying to answer all the e-mails."
    The problem is that users of the site — www.realage.com — are not just viewing a page, they are engaging an application when taking the 30-minute test. The computing horsepower needed is extraordinary.
    Oprah, and an appearance by Roizen a week later on "Good Morning America," also caused an old-fashioned problem. Bookstores can hardly keep the book — "RealAge: Are You As Young As You Can Be?" — on the shelf. The tome is No. 2 on the New York Times list and hit the top of Amazon.com's Hot 100.
    To deal with the Internet issues, an invigorated RealAge.com launches this month, this time with 14 servers, each capable of handling about 25,000 users at a time. Something of a test is coming: RealAge will be featured on the April 12 edition of the television news magazine show "20/20" on ABC. While Silver isn’t expecting an Oprah-like swamping, if it happens, it is unlikely the new servers will keep up. "I think it would have crashed just about any network out there, except maybe Yahoo," he says.