Election Day Web traffic no shooting Starr
Officials at several of the major news sites said that, while traffic exceeded the average weeknight's draw, Netizens didn't go online Tuesday night in anywhere near the numbers they did for other recent blockbuster events -- such as the release of the Starr report and John Glenn's return to space.
"Our initial numbers from last night are flat," said Salon magazine spokesman Patrick Hurley. The site, which offers opinions and analysis on all things political, had originally expected a traffic spike between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, but by 12:00 p.m. PT Wednesday no such spike had occurred, Hurley said.
The CNN Interactive site garnered about 20 million page views Tuesday, a "very good' number for a weekday, but nowhere near the 500,000 hits-per-minute traffic rush the site experienced during the Glenn space launch, said Kerrin Roberts, public relations manager for the site.
But CNN officials were pleased that the election night went off without technical glitches. Postings to the site's bulletin boards were about average for a weekday, he said.
At the MSNBC site, 1.1 million unique users tuned in for election coverage, well over the typical daily traffic, MSNBC Editor-in-Chief Merrill Brown said. In a normal month, the site draws about 8.8 million visitors, MSNBC officials said.
Coverage of local issues and races drew particular interest, Brown said.
On America Online, an election-night chat with John F. Kennedy Jr. drew 50,000 participants -- an impressive number, but JFK Jr. didn't prove to be the draw that a chat about politics with Barbra Streisand was on Monday. The self-described "singer/director/activist" drew 75,000 participants during a similar live chat, said Kathleen deLaski, AOL's director of political initiatives.
A poll asking AOL (NYSE:AOL) users how they voted drew 30,000 participants as of Wednesday morning, deLaski said. More extensive details on traffic to AOL's election areas is not expected to be available for a few days, she said.