World Cup: A Stress Test For The Net

by Omar L. Gallaga, NPR

The World Cup will be a test for news and sports sites as well as social networks as traffic soars (especially during the day this week when people are away from TVs). In this week's All Tech Considered, we talk about traffic, how to catch matches online and 3-D.

Here are some of the World Cup-related bits we discussed.

• Friday's World Cup Web traffic surpassed that of the Obama inauguration and is expected to continue to stay heavy.
• The World Cup has been a mixed blessing for Twitter. The social media service rolled out new Cup-related features, but has been plagued with service issues for the last week.
• Facebook has also gotten in on the action and is encouraging users to watch live matches and chat with their friends about it.
• As far as catching matches on a computer or on your smart phone, there's options including ESPN3.com, Univision, the official ESPN 2010 FIFA World Cup app, Mobi.TV (whose site was down last I checked), Orb Live, AT&T's Mobile TV, Verizon's V CAST and Sprint TV.
• 3-D TV is having its debut on Comcast, DirecTV and AT&T's U-verse. Here's a look at the ESPN control room putting out all those dimensions.
• NPR's own World Cup blog, Show Me Your Cleats!
• Are you pro-Vuvuzela or anti-Vuvuzela? There's apps to turn your phone into one of the buzzy horns and another that allows you to take virtual horns out of the hands of World Cup attendees.

 

Broadcast Dates

• All Things Considered, June 14, 2010