CastleCops® - Users flock to Web as war begins

Johnny-B-Goode writes "08:48 Thursday 20th March 2003
Reuters

With the beginning of military action against Iraq, the Internet is expected to become the major source of information for many people
The US strike against Iraq has led to a jump in traffic on the Internet, which is expected to become the major source of information on the conflict for many people.

But the limited nature of the assault, and the timing of the strike -- which came late on Wednesday evening in the United States when many Americans were at home watching television rather than in front of their computers at work -- meant that any fears of Internet gridlock and outages appeared to be unfounded.

Yahoo!'s news site saw about three times more traffic than it would in a typical hour directly after President George W. Bush told Americans in a speech that the US had launched a war on Iraq, according to spokeswoman Joanna Stevens.

Dean Wright, editor-in-chief of the Internet arm of cable news network MSNBC, said traffic was running at two to two-and-a-half times normal levels after the war started. He said in the next few days the Web site would target people at work who have high-speed connections by including a live video television stream

Yahoo!'s Stevens said Web surfers were also using more targeted searches after Bush's speech. The top search terms on Yahoo! in the 15 minutes after the speech were: Iraq, George W. Bush, world map, Ari Fleischer, Saddam Hussein and war, she said.

Over the last couple days, the search for news of the threat of war drove many Americans to the Web. The 15 top news sites had an average 41 percent more traffic on Tuesday than their daily average over the previous four weeks, according to Comscore Media Metrix.

The Internet has increasingly emerged as a key source for news, communication and comfort during major events, especially after the 11 September, 2001 attacks on the United States.

The conflict with Iraq will be the biggest war involving the United States since the Internet became a major medium. By contrast, in the 1991 Gulf War, the Internet was not widely used by the public, and the cable networks were the dominant source for breaking news for many people.

The increasing availability of high-speed Internet connections is also likely to drive usage as many news Web sites offer streaming video, live feeds from Iraq, and breaking news coverage.

Although activity on the Internet picked up after Bush's speech, there was no crush of Web traffic because many Americans were at home watching television rather than at work in front of their computers. People are still watching the television and right now this is a visual thing, said Eric Siegel, principal consultant at Keynote Systems, which measures the performance of Internet sites. As more information appears than they can get from the TV, people will turn to the Web.

Keynote Systems said there were few disruptions, and major Internet service providers, including AOL, and most Web sites, reported normal operations late on Wednesday.

However, there were some glitches. Several government Web sites in the United States and Britain had been caught off-guard by traffic spikes spurred by the looming attack on Iraq and worries about a rise in terrorist attacks, Keynote Systems said in a report earlier on Wednesday.

Keynote's Siegel said he does not see any major problems on the Internet, barring an attack on the Web structure itself, and he said many sites have prepared for increased activity.Copyright � 2003 CNET Networks, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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