Election night post-mortem

By Joshua Benton @jbenton Nov. 5, 2008, 3:09 p.m.

We noted yesterday that Rich Miller had predicted trouble on election night for sites like FiveThirtyEight that hosted on free/cheap sites like Blogger. Well, score one for Rich — FiveThirtyEight was noticeably slower than its peers all night long, earning this rebuke from the site’s Sean Quinn:

One does wonder why Blogger’s owner Google, of all people, is consistently unable to handle large surges of traffic. It’s always so sad to see a news site’s servers struggle with the moments that should be their finest: when the whole world descends.

Also note that, as one might have predicted, last night broke the all-time record for most traffic to online news sites. The peak moment: Right at 11 p.m. EST, when the networks declared it for Obama.

Joshua Benton is the senior writer and former director of Nieman Lab. You can reach him via email (joshua_benton@harvard.edu) or Twitter DM (@jbenton).

POSTED Nov. 5, 2008, 3:09 p.m.

Show tags

TWITTER FACEBOOK EMAIL

Peter Martin

Would you pay to be able to quit TikTok and Instagram? You’d be surprised how many would

“The relationship he has uncovered is more like the co-dependence seen in a destructive relationship, or the way we relate to addictive products such as tobacco that we know are doing us harm.”

Joshua Benton

BREAKING: The ways people hear about big news these days; “into a million pieces,” says source

The New York Times and the Washington Post compete with meme accounts for the chance to be first with a big headline.

Julia Barton

In 1924, a magazine ran a contest: “Who is to pay for broadcasting and how?” A century later, we’re still asking the same question

Radio Broadcast received close to a thousand entries to its contest — but ultimately rejected them all.