The present invention is directed towards a “flash crowd” technique for handling situations where the cache receives additional requests, e.g.,. nearly simultaneous requests, for the same object during the time the server is processing and returning the response object for a first requester. Once all such nearly simultaneous requests are responded to by the cache, the object is flushed from the cache, with no additional expire time or invalidation action needed. This technique of the present invention enables data to be cached and served for very small amounts of time for objects that would otherwise be considered non-cacheable. As such, this technique yields a significant improvement in applications that serve fast changing data to a large volume of concurrent users, such, for example, as real time stock quotes, or a fast evolving news story.