EON8

This was probably one of the greatest (in my opinion) experiments out there. What is EON8 you say? EON8 was a website (currently down as it has had so much traffic the past few days) that was mysterious. Mysterious by having all sorts of encrypted data all over the place not only on their site but on some forums as well. They also had a counter that was counting down 0 and reached exactly 12:00 AM July 1, 2006.

There was quite a bit of hype about this site being a terrorist organization and would launch massive attacks or even possibly the end of the Internet. The really cool thing that made this so well is that it spread all over the place. The site didn't say it was the end of the net or gonna launch a massive attack, it was just a site with some encrypted randomly generated numbers and a few pages where access was restricted by means of a username and password, and a count down timer. Oh yeah, and it had a status indicator, and at 12 it changed to deployed. What helped things out, is that people say "The Planet" the datacenter that hosted the site, hosts "Terrorist" organizations so people just automatically assumed this.

Even the eon8 irc channel at gamesurge.net was packed with hundreds of people including the creator of the site himself..

So what was this experiment? The experiment was to see how easily people believe in things. EON8 did not have anything on their site saying they are terrorists, or that anything was actually gonna happen.
"As of July 1st, 2006, the E8 Project has completed.
The purpose of this project was to determine the reactions of the internet public to lack of information." - http://www.eon8.com/deployed21b.php

So to me, this is one of the greatest experiments in my opinion.
Great Job man.