Obama’s inauguration pulls record numbers of internet buffs

Washington, January 21: President Barack Obama must have been eager to embark on his reign but the rest of the world was even more so.

It seems people look up to him as their savior, who would bring about some miraculous revolution as soon as he takes office. Obama’s fan following is not unknown but public interest in his inauguration was amazing.

Besides the millions who turned up to watch the president take oath live, a whole brigade of internet users followed the event online. Despite gearing up for the event in advance, many websites failed to keep up with the traffic on Tuesday.

As news agencies offered live updates of the event on their respective websites, some embedded with videos, people poured in to catch the coverage, only to realize that all the traffic has rendered the desired page unavailable.

According to Akamai Technologies Inc., the provider of internet video for several Web sites, as many as 7.7 million people watched video streams at the same time.

Internet's top 40 sites were slowed by as much as 60 percent when the ceremony started at 11 a.m., and it declined further for many sites, said Keynote Systems Inc., a web site performance tracker.

By 3:30 p.m., EST CNN.com claimed to have served more than 21.3 million live video streams globally, since 6 in the morning. Allowing four different views of the event, it received more than 136 million page views by mid-Tuesday.

MSNBC.com said it had delivered over nine million live streams by 1.00 p.m. and enjoyed more than 80 million page views.

Foxnews.com served about five million streams by 5 p.m., the maximum in a single day, said a rep.

While other sites are also pouring in with their record figures, internet users also largely took to blogging about the event, giving the site-owners a tough time handling all the uploads.

No doubt, Obama’s popularity was a major draw but the online enthusiasm about the president’s inauguration is also credited to the evolution of web-videos.

The past few years have seen a remarkable surge in the online video network, which is likely to grow further and be a magnet for internet junkies during any major event.