Who Says Futbol Isn’t Popular In America?
Unbelievable Web traffic today around the World Cup match between the U.S. and Algeria. Personally, I was sitting in our company cafeteria with about 400 of my closest Intel friends watching the dramatic conclusion to the game – which was capped off with a stunning goal by Landon Donovan in the 91st minute. Amazing. The whole room erupted and I think more than a few laptops and smartphones hit the floor in all the excitement. I immediately hit Facebook and Twitter with the excited exclamation of GOOOOAAALLLL!!! which was commented upon almost instantaneously by my friends on the social graph. I wasn’t the only one. According to Mashable, who’s staff was watching the net traffic on Akamai’s Net Usage Index, traffic spiked tremendously soon after Donovan put the ball in the back of the net:
“In the minutes following Landon Donovan’s game winning goal in the 91st minute of action (which sent the U.S. to the round of 16), traffic spiked to 11.2 million visitors per minute, which moves the event past the 2008 presidential election as the second highest traffic spike of all-time.”
Even their Editor in Chief, Adam Ostrow, called the impact on the social web with this tweet:
“that goal is so taking down Twitter …”
Pretty impressive…and you can see from the chart below, the English have got nothin’ on us.