The Obama Curve: Inauguration effect on Web Traffic

Obama’s coming in as the US President was indeed a great event. But such was the interest in his swearing in that web sites were gearing up for more traffic. What happened was amazing though – the web traffic based on the search queries fired on Google shows that the world almost stopped![1]

Not only this, people also weren’t uploading pictures on Flickr [2] nor listening to their favorites songs on Last.fm [3]

Although many sites offered streaming video – who might have seen a spike – many normal attention hogs had more humble time during those few minutes! [4]

Just goes to show what one man – unknown 4 years back – could do to the entire technology world!

Reference Links:

1. Search findings from the U.S. Presidential inauguration
2. Stop Flickring and Pay Attention: The Obama Curve
3. The Obama Curve: What an Inauguration does to your traffic – Web Requests
4. Web Sites Scale Up for Inauguration Traffic