UK news sites and mobile networks were slammed by record traffic as news spread of the Thursday morning blasts in London, causing delays and even some crashes. Reuters reported that Thursday would be BBCi’s single highest traffic day.
A roundup:
WSJ: Text messaging and IM got through when other methods were overloaded. Aided by lower sub rates, 3G networks did the job, too, allowing users to send photos and video at a time when other cellphone users couldn’t even make voice calls. The Journal has all the details.
Reuters: Sky.com had 1.7 million unique users by mid-afternoon — equal to a month’s traffic; the site also served 25 million pages. Reuters’ sites experienced unrelated technical problems but still handled five times the normal traffic in the hours after the blasts.
Hollywood Reporter: A grainy video taken with a cell phone from the inside of a subway car seconds after a blast spread around the world, illustrating the changing nature of newsgathering. In the U.S., NBC Mobile is even equipping staffers with video-enabled cell phones. At Flickr, two staffers working on an upgrade learned of the bombings at the same time: “one saw a professional news agency’s online report, while the other saw photos being posted by a Flickr user.”
PCMag.com: By 2 p.m. Eastern, AOL had delivered 300,000 video streams via its new search engine and video player. Video search engine Blinkx.tv had what is probably its highest traffic day.
MarketWatch: A first-person account by reporter Kabir Chibber, who raced to the scene at the Aldgate Station after his office was rocked by the blast. The bureau’s building later was evacuated.
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