The Obama Curve: The Effect of the Inauguration Speech on the Internet
Wednesday, 21. January 2009, 17:31:51
I'm not one to take a great notice of the press and sometimes can be blind to many of the issues going on in the world around me, but I couldn't have avoided the talk of the Obama Inauguration. For many people this was a big event; for me it was inevitable - the big part was actually winning the election - it's not like there was any going back from there.
One thing that has caught my eye to do with the Obama Inauguration is the effect that the event had on internet traffic and luckily for you, I have some graphs from Google, Last.fm, Flickr and Twitter. You may be surprised at the results... but possibly not.
Google comments; "The overall query volume of Google searches dropped in the U.S. from the time President Obama took the oath of office until the end of his inaugural speech, demonstrating that all eyes were on today's festivities."
Last.fm
Last.fm comments; "Numbers removed obviously, this is dip we suffered during Obama's Inauguration."
Flickr
Flickr comments: "During the actual swearing in, we see a little dip while people watch the live inauguration coverage."
Unsurprisingly, and most interestingly, Twitter had the adverse effect and actually witnessed an increase in traffic and tweets: "We saw 5x normal tweets-per-second and about 4x tweets-per-minute as this chart illustrates. Overall, Twitter sailed smoothly through the inauguration but at the peak, some folks did experience a 2-5 minute delay receiving updates."
This is where a good blogger would form their own opinions of these charts and analyse the situation, giving you a long and informative summary of what you see above... alas, I'm sure that most people who read this blog aren't as interested in such things as I am, and those that are are already geeking out of their own accord.
If you're an Opera Community staff member, it would be interesting to see whether the blogging community seen a curve akin to the other sites listed above. Leave me a comment, or send me a graph, and I'll include it in the blog post above.
WIDGETIZE