A bunch of us from CloudFlare are packing up to head to Austin over the next 24 hours for SXSW, the interactive, music, and film festival. We've been supporters of SXSW for a while and helped the festival's panel picker stay online under the crushing load of people registering ideas to present over the coming weeks. Everyone who has visited the SXSW site to choose what to do at the festival has passed through CloudFlare's network and the site has been faster and safer as a result.
You Can't Build Buzz If Your Site's Offline
It's only fitting, then, that several of the startups launching at SXSW are using CloudFlare to ensure they stay online. One of the fastest ways to stop buzz is to have your site be unavailable. CloudFlare helps ensure that, even if you're a new startup without a ton of resources, you can have an infrastructure equivalent to an Internet giant.
Start It Up
A few of the startups launching at SXSW who are using CloudFlare have contacted us to give us a sneak peak at what they're working on. Some of them are pretty amazing and it will be interesting if the next Twitter or Foursquare emerges this year. I won't steal any of their thunder, but we're excited to help them with their infrastructure so they can stay online so they can focus on building buzz.
If you're launching at SXSW and you haven't done so yet, there's still time to signup for CloudFlare. It takes 5 minutes and even our free plan will do wonders to make sure your service stays online. Finally, make sure you look for us at the festival. We love startups and are always excited to hear about what the tech community is working on.