Most likely if you use the Akismet spam prevention plugin, you upgraded yesterday, as 2,970 downloads were reportedly uploaded to WordPress blogs yesterday. This set the record for the most downloads in the history of Akismet, and it is also likely that it set records for most downloads in one day by any plugin. Reasons for the huge spike in downloads may have resulted from:

• the wide use of the plugin
• more top bloggers mentioning the new plugin
• plugin directories linking to the Akismet page, making it easier to find, etc.
• the recent Spam Filter Free Day and more users wanting to stay up-to-date with the plugin, new features, and spam protection

Two small bugs were reported by some users, so the Akismet development team upgraded the plugin to version 2.1.2. These bugs caused headers sent and other parse errors to occur.

Akismet Download Statistics – Dec. 17, 2007