News Bits: Web Wins on Election Night

Written by Erin Barker

Wednesday, November 5. 2008 at 11:40 AM EST Post a comment

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You may have heard that democratic nominee Barack Obama won the election last night after a record turnout of voters -- possibly the highest since women won the right to vote. But the night also set several records online.

Akamai Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: AKAM), which provides global Web content distribution for CNN, NBC, the BBC, Reuters, and others, registered a record 8.5 million global visitors per minute at 11:00 p.m. EST, as Obama took to the stage for his victory speech. The previous record was 7.2 million during the 2006 World Cup (at last we have our priorities in order). Web traffic levels are expected to remain high today.

CNN.com received 27 million unique visitors during election day -- the most in its history. It also nearly tripled its previous record for live streams. 

The network also debuted a new gadget that even went beyond the magical touch-screen map: CNN correspondent Jessica Yellin appeared via hologram (as in "Help me, Wolf Blitzer... you're my only hope!") in the CNN newsroom. Yellin was shot with 35 HD cameras in a ring, all pointed at her in different angles, and beamed back to the CNN mothership.

Wolf's take: "It's still Jessica Yellin and you look like Jessica Yellin and we know you are Jessica Yellin... All right, Jessica. You were a terrific hologram."

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