|
|
Thursday’s first full day of fighting in Gulf War II nearly crashed some American and British web sites as concerned surfers searched for information. The U.S. Army home page may be in the worst shape. Only about 70 percent of those trying to load the site have been successful. Even when users are able to log on, it takes more than a minute to load. The U.S. Marine Corps site has been experiencing similar problems, which began Monday. In the U.K., those logging on to get information on terrorism have a 50-50 chance of succeeding. The Home Office’s terrorism page has been overloaded during daytime work hours and loads only about half the time. American and British government sites apparently did not make the needed preparations for large traffic surges. Many news sites, which learned from the Sept. 11 overload, removed graphics this week in order to thin loading time. They have not reported any significant problems.
Big boom upcoming for online gaming industry
Online gaming has the potential to morph into a real money-maker for smart companies, a new report from In-Stat/MDR finds. Using analysis from Jupiter Research, the report predicts that PC and hand-held gaming will grow 18 percent by 2007. Jupiter says that will result in 61 percent penetration, and more than 180 million U.S. game users. The stability of the gaming industry also indicates a potential for hundreds of millions of dollars to be earned online. The age of the average console user has risen to 23 from 19 in recent years. This older group of gamers is interested in more sophisticated and mature games, the report finds. Gaming drove almost 10 percent of last year’s American internet backbone (main network connections composing the internet) traffic. In-Stat predicts that countries with higher broadband penetration, such as the U.S., Japan and Korea, will drive greater online console sales. The report predicts that the market will reach 9 percent penetration in four years.
Estée Lauder, Amazon lead web advertisers
According to Nielsen//NetRatings, Estée Lauder Companies was the web’s most prolific advertiser during February with 3,472,486 impressions (defined by how many times an ad is served for viewing). Amazon.com was close behind with 3,239,163 impressions. Both were well ahead of No. 3 NetFlix, which had 2,765,256 impressions. Rounding out the top five were Classmates Online and SBC Communications. Each of the top six advertisers served more than 2 million ad impressions, with the next four adding more than 1.3 million apiece. Thanks to a Valentine’s Day ad blitz, 1-800-Flowers.com was the ninth-biggest advertiser.
Sending personal email at work? You're not alone
At-work emails frequently have nothing to do with actual work. A new study by the U.K.’s Waterford Technologies examined five public and private sector businesses with 3,230 users. Waterford found that roughly 53 percent of emails sent during the average week were for personal reasons. At one business, the study found, a full 70 percent of emails were not work related. Waterford also found that email files eat up tons of space on office servers, much of it for erased personal messages. Waterford recommended that companies begin enforcing their personal correspondence policies in order to save money on email.
March 24, 2003© 2003 Media Life
Send to a
Friend| Printer-Friendly Version
Cover Page | Contact
Us