2009: Barack Obama is inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States in the first such ceremony to be widely streamed live over the web.
Over 1 billion people are estimated to have watched the inauguration on their TVs and computers, with nearly 2 million people crammed onto the National Mall. The web content delivery service Akamai, which handles one-fifth of the world's web traffic, reported a record 7 million simultaneous data streams -- most transmitting live video -- at around 12:15 p.m. Eastern time, when the new president began his speech.
As The New York Times reported, some viewers couldn’t easily find working live internet feeds, after trying CNN, the BBC and CBS. The BBC lost its streaming video feed for 30 minutes immediately following Obama's speech, and visitors to the site received a message asking them to "please come back later" instead of watching George W. Bush embrace President Obama before getting into a helicopter and leaving the Capitol.
“With the inauguration occurring during work-day hours in the U.S., we witnessed record numbers of live streams served in support of many leading news businesses," said Robert Hughes, Akamai’s executive vice president of global sales, services and marketing.
According to Akamai’s Net Usage Index, web traffic peaked at 5.4 million requests per minute -- and 2 terabits per second -- on this day in 2009, which gained it the title of fifth busiest day in internet history at the time. The previous November's election night coincided with the highest-ranking slot of 8.5 million requests per minute, followed by a World Cup playoff and two college basketball playoffs.
Anticipating a spike in internet traffic, Facebook coordinated with CNN to pipe status updates alongside the live video feed. Facebook reported a flood of 600,000 updates between 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Eastern time, with 200,000 updates posting in the hour just prior. Just after the ceremony, Akamai reported a sudden drop in total web traffic.
Google blogged that former president George W. Bush's inaugural speeches in 2001 and 2005 hardly drew an online audience. According to the search service, there were no requests for streaming video for the 2001 inauguration and that in 2005 the total number of inaugural search requests had grown tenfold, yet only a few requests for "inauguration audio" and "streaming video of inauguration" were made. However, Google reports that phrases like "YouTube live inauguration," "inaugural podcast," and "inaugural speech mp3" made up a third of all of its users' searches related to Obama's historical day.
Source: Various
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