Free Starbucks WiFi Swamps Servers

According to this report from Silcon Alley Insider (linking to Javamancy), Starbucks must be making some money on coffee today. Citing overwhelming demand for the new free WiFi deal it appears Starbucks servers are inching to a crawl.

…Lots of people (myself included) are experiencing authentication failures because the login servers are unable to keep up with the traffic. The presentation of this is: invalid username and/or password.

A quick call to the Starbucks Card customer service confirmed that they’ve been fielding questions about the service outage, but according to Michael (the frazzled [rep] that answered my call), they don’t have an ETA for the outage resolution. They’re hoping for service restoration soon, but no guarantees.

I’m guessing those coffee break guys at jkOnTheRun invited bunches of their friends over.