Barack Obama has already broken through so many barriers, you could write a book on them. The inauguration two days ago in and of itself would be a chapter. Upwards of two million people showed up, millions more watched on television, polls show that six in ten watched him being sworn in and the enthusiasm was overwhelming. It wasn't rowdy like Andrew Jackson's 1829 ceremony, but much more positive (and definitely a lot less cronyism). Anyways, there was another record broken on Tuesday that wasn't noticed by the live crowd or the TV audience.
From The NY Times:
Damn, he even broke his own record from early November, not bad Mr. President!Internet traffic in the United States hit a record peak at the start of President Obama’s speech as people watched, read about and commented on the inauguration, according to Bill Woodcock, the research director at the Packet Clearing House, a nonprofit organization that analyzes online traffic. The figures surpassed even the high figures on the day President Obama was elected.
“The peak is the highest measured to date, and it appears to be mostly a U.S. phenomenon,” Mr. Woodcock said, adding that it did not appear that global records would be set.[...]
Data from CNN.com captured the uniqueness of the online surge. CNN said it provided more than 21.3 million video streams over a nine-hour span up to midafternoon. That blew past the 5.3 million streams provided during all of Election Day. At its peak, CNN.com fed 1.3 million live streams simultaneously, according to Jennifer Martin, a spokeswoman for the site.
Now as the article highlights, there was still plenty of problems with the web stream for many viewers. I myself saw a few frozen images during the ceremony but overall it came through pretty well. Considering the amount of traffic and the fact that streams would fail in the last couple years with a fraction of users, things are getting much better for this technology.
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