Osama online

Posted at 12:10 PM on May 2, 2011 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

This is a chart showing hourly traffic to the MPR News Web site yesterday. I've taken one of the axis labels out because that's the kind of information we'd have to kill you over if you knew it, but the point is the same: Even late on a Sunday night, people -- a lot of people -- are getting their information online.

It's an interesting chart, mostly because every TV station in America was covering the build-up to last night's presidential announcement, which was delayed by more than an hour.

Akemai, a company which hosts many of the larger news Web sites in the world, registered 4.1 million page views right around the time President Obama began his speech to the nation.

The spike represents a 24% increase in global web traffic compared to the averages for the time period when many people have gone to bed.

That number seems low. But it still represents 4.1 million page views per minute, about the same as the Super Bowl, which is all about TV.

By comparison, last week's royal wedding drew about 5.3 million page views per minute. But nothing compares to the all-time online audience winner: Last year's World Cup qualifying matches, which coincided with the longest-ever Wimbledon final. That drew over 10 million page views per minute.

At least online, you can beat terrorism with soccer and tennis.

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Comments (8)

Dear Bob -

"At least online, you can beat terrorism with soccer and tennis."

AKA bread and circuses?

Posted by Jim Shapiro | May 2, 2011 12:26 PM

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yeah, but how much information is coming through traditional media in various locations for these events vs. the web.

In the US tennis and soccer don't get much coverage, where as Osama is the only thing being covered today.

Posted by jon | May 2, 2011 12:43 PM

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As a new smartphone user, it was interesting to interact using phone/web tech while watching/waiting for the TV coverage.

What's interesting to me about the top graph is that while I often (too often?) visit MPR online during the day, it did not occur to me to visit this site for ObL news last night.

Posted by bsimon | May 2, 2011 12:53 PM

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From twitter last night (before the speech):

RT: @b_stahl
Obama: "I was going to yell you that Bin Laden was dead, but since you all read Twitter I guess you don't need me anymore."

Posted by Ben Chorn | May 2, 2011 12:57 PM

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In my case, I was watching the season premiere of "In Plain Sight," and I couldn't change the station b/c it was being recorded on TIVO. So I fired up the DroidX and tuned to whitehouse.gov for the live video feed.

Posted by Bob Collins | May 2, 2011 1:04 PM

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Dear Bob -

" In my case, I was watching the season premiere of "In Plain Sight,"...

NPR headline: Scene From Pakistan: Bin Laden Was Hiding In Plain Sight

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/05/02/135918993/scene-from-pakistan-bin-laden-was-hiding-in-plain-sight

Can you spell SYNCHRONICITY? :-)

Posted by Jim Shapiro | May 2, 2011 1:48 PM

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Soccer games and royal wedding are pre-scheduled events. I didn't hear about a presidential telecast, or the delays thereof, because I was paying attention to other things all evening long. It was only as I was closing up shop for the night and turning on the BBC that I heard about the UBL event.

You had almost as much web traffic, for an event that hadn't been announced days to months in advance. I think that's really saying something.

If the lead-up to the announcement had been during a weekday, with that many more people hearing that "something was coming up", I suspect the numbers would have been quite a bit higher than they were for late on a Sunday night.

Posted by davidz | May 2, 2011 2:17 PM

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"I fired up the DroidX and tuned to whitehouse.gov for the live video feed."

I'll have to remember that trick. Thanks. I'm still figuring out what the darn thing is capable of...

Posted by bsimon | May 2, 2011 3:08 PM

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