Michael Jackson's death on Thursday caused a spike in visits to news Web sites that affected the performance and availability of some of the biggest ones, according to Web monitoring company Keynote Systems.
Between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time, the availability for the news sites from ABC, CBS and the LA Times dropped to almost 10 percent, meaning that about nine out of 10 visitors couldn't get the sites to load.
[ Stay ahead of the key tech business news with InfoWorld's Today's Headlines: First Look newsletter and InfoWorld Daily podcast. ]
Starting at 5:30 p.m., the average download speed for news sites tracked by Keynote went from less than four seconds to almost 9 seconds, and their average availability dropped from almost 100 percent to 86 percent, the company said. News sites monitored by Keynote returned to normal performance and availability levels by 9:15 p.m.
Other news sites that experienced problems included AOL, MSNBC, NBC, the San Francisco Chronicle and Yahoo News, according to Keynote.
However, in a subsequent statement late Friday evening, Keynote noted that the slowdowns were caused primarily by external providers of interactive images and ads to the news sites. An example was the news site of ABC, which served up its internal content without delay but got dragged down by its external providers, Keynote said.
In these situations, depending on how a Web site is designed or how end users' browsers are configured, Web pages can display immediately their internal content, leaving blank sections for the delayed external content or, at the other extreme, the pages will not be displayed until all components are ready to be rendered, according to Keynote.
"Ongoing end-to-end load testing and performance measurement benchmarking are essential to being prepared for unexpected news events. News sites should require third party content companies, such as ad networks, to certify the capacity of their networks, perform regular load tests from around the globe, and have strong Service Level Agreements in place," Keynote said in its statement Friday evening.
Meanwhile, Reuters' home page had a period of "significant slowdown" between around 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., according to Web monitoring company Pingdom.
Web monitoring company Gomez also noticed performance problems in the news sites it tracks, a spokeswoman said via e-mail Friday. At around 6 p.m. on Thursday, the average response time in Gomez's online media Web performance benchmark rose to 25 seconds, up from 11 seconds at the same time the day the previous day, she said.
Another high-profile news site that malfunctioned on Thursday was Google News, which interpreted the sharp spike in Jackson-related search queries as an automated attack. "As a result, for about 25 minutes yesterday, when some people searched Google News they saw a 'We're sorry' page before finding the articles they were looking for," Google said in an official blog on Friday. In general, Google saw a "volcanic" spike in Jackson-related search queries on Thursday, when more than 50 of the top-100 searches were related to him, a Google spokeswoman said via e-mail.
Akamai's Net Usage Index for global news sites traffic surged at around 6 p.m. and hit a peak of 4.24 million visitors per minute at 6:26 p.m.
The usage spike also put a strain on online communication tools, like AOL's AIM instant messaging system, which went offline for about 40 minutes on Thursday.
Get the independent advice and expertise you need to support a virtual workforce.
The increase in Linux popularity has increased the frequency and sophistication of malware attacks. Read this 2 page white paper now to learn how you can protect your Linux environment with real-time protection that is certified by all major Linux vendors.
Download now »
Ensuring acceptable application delivery will become even more difficult over the next few years. As a result, IT organizations need to ensure that the approach that they take to resolving the current application delivery challenges can scale to support the emerging challenges. This handbook elaborates on the key tasks associated with planning, optimization, management and control and provides decision criteria to help IT organizations choose appropriate solutions.
Download now »
A common misconception is that mid-range storage requirements are dramatically different than that of a larger enterprise. Mid-range storage users may require less capacity, but they have similar functionality and management requirements. This ESG paper examines mid-range storage needs and reviews a new solution that adjusts size while retaining value, performance and functionality.
Download now »
Sign up to receive InfoWorld Resource Alerts
Like any valuable resource, IT is a terrible thing to waste. But by applying the same lean techniques that have been used to streamline manufacturing processes, IT departments can reduce costs, improve performance and better manage resources.
Download now! »
Stephen Elliot, vice president of strategy for CA's Infrastructure Management and Data Center Automation business unit, explains why difficult economic times drive the need for simplified management capabilities and advanced automation tools.
Listen now! »
According to a recent study CA conducted with 300 CIOs and top IT executives, 64 percent of respondents say they've already invested in virtualization, and the other 36 percent reported that they plan to invest in virtualization.
Download now! »
In this video learn about process automation in a virtualized world. How CA and VMware are enabling enterprise datacenter automation.
View now! »
Recommend This
