Obama Breaks Online Records

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:

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.

Damn, he even broke his own record from early November, not bad Mr. President!

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.

Ron Paul, Low In The Polls But Hot On The Net

If your popularity on the world wide web was an indication of who was going to win the Republican nomination, Ron Paul would likely face the Democrat in the fall of 2008. Unfortunately for him he is still just a blip on the radar screen when it comes to real world campaigning. Even though his fundraising is up, it is still far behind the front runners, which means he has a small staff and a small following. Yet he is still one of the most popular words on the net.

From The Washington Post:

Rep. Ron Paul is more popular on Facebook than Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). He's got more friends on MySpace than former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. His MeetUp groups, with 11,924 members in 279 cities, are the biggest in the Republican field. And his official YouTube videos, including clips of his three debate appearances, have been viewed nearly 1.1 million times -- more than those of any other candidate, Republican or Democrat, except Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

No one's more surprised at this robust Web presence than Paul himself, a self-described "old-school," "pen-and-paper guy" who's serving his 10th congressional term and was the Libertarian Party's nominee for president in 1988.

"To tell you the truth, I hadn't heard about this YouTube and all the other Internet sites until supporters started gathering in them," confessed Paul, 71, who said that he's raised about $100,000 after each of the three debates. Not bad considering that his campaign had less than $10,000 when his exploratory committee was formed in mid-February. "I tell you I've never raised money as efficiently as that, in all my years in Congress, and all I'm doing is speaking my mind."

But can these impressive web stats translate into anything in the real world. Being popular on facebook or myspace is great, but will all your 'friends' turn up at their polling place on election day? Will they contribute funds to your campaign? True, it is working well for second-place Obama over here on the left. But the netroots and the conserva-roots are two totally different animals. So Paul is still just a blip to most Republican voters.

Techno Ted (Stevens) At It Again

Senator Ted Stevens, who also goes by 'Techno Ted' and Mr. 'The Internet is a series of tubes' has yet another whacko moment. On his campaign website, an interesting message appears. What on Earth, or outside of this planet can it be?

"Through a series of highly sophisticated and complex algorithms, this system has determined that you are not presently authorized to use this system function. It could be that you simply mistyped a password, or, it could be that you are some sort of interplanetary alien-being that has no hands and, thus, cannot type."

But wait, it gets even better....

Also from the site as noted by the WaPo blog:

"If I were a gambler, I would bet that a cat (an orange tabby named Sierra or Harley) somehow jumped onto your keyboard and forgot some of the more important pointers from those typing lessons you paid for. Based on the actual error encountered, I would guess that the feline in question simply forgot to place one or both paws on the appropriate home keys before starting. Then again, I suppose it could have been a keyboard error caused by some form of cosmic radiation; this would fit nicely with my interplanetary alien-being theory."

Who could even make this crazy random shit up?

Stevens' staff members Aaron Saunders and Tim McKeever didn't know either. McKeever admitted to not knowing much about the internet, saying his teenage son was much more adept at the tubes. In fact the site isn't really up yet. So who posted that mysterious message? Perhaps Stevens took an internet course to find out about the truth of internet after all? Nah.

Mary Ann Akers who wrote the blog post did ask that question:

So who left that whacky message on the campaign site, and why? We thought the tabby cat reference a bit curious, considering Stevens had a pet cat who died recently. How mean to tug at the senator's heart strings that way! Though we hear the senator's cat was named Tigger, not "Sierra Harley."

Senate Democratic political operatives professed innocence. Though they were down right gleeful over having an excuse to dredge up "Techno Ted," as Sen. Stevens came to be known after his Internet speech in which he declared, among other musings, that the Internet is "not a big truck."

"Unfortunately, this is the least crazy thing Ted Stevens has said about the Internet," said
Matthew Miller, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

It seems that these days almost anything out of the 85 year old Stevens is crazy. The guy is one of the captains of pork laden earmarks and zany comments.