The CNN Digital Network’s Inauguration Day coverage – from live streaming video to 3-D interactive maps to intimate contributions from users – catapulted the site to the No. 1 position among all news and information sites in every Nielsen Online metric.
Additionally, CNN.com Live, the Internet’s only multi-stream live video news service, served a record-breaking 1.3 million concurrent live streams in the moments leading up to President Barack Obama’s inaugural address on Tuesday, Jan. 20, nearly doubling what is believed to be the previous Internet record of an estimated 700,000 concurrent live streams served during a YouTube event, as reported by the Los Angeles Times. (Source: Internal CDN monitoring data)
On Inauguration Day, CNN Digital was the No. 1 news and information site, outranking the competition in all Nielsen Online metrics, including:
• Unique Users: 11 million unique visitors made CNN Digital the most visited online news destination , besting nearest competitors MSNBC Digital and Yahoo! News by 10% and 21%, respectively;
• Time Spent: CNN Digital generated 97 million total minutes for the day, beating MSNBC Digital and Yahoo! News by 41% and 117%, respectively; and
• Page Views: CNN Digital generated 94.6 million page views, 28% more than MSNBC Digital and 133% greater than Yahoo! News. (Source: Nielsen Online)
Inauguration Day also unveiled a watershed moment for CNN.com through its partnership with Facebook that enabled CNN.com Live users to update their Facebook statuses directly from the CNN.com Live player, where they also could see status updates from their friends and other Facebook users. CNN.com Live served a record-breaking 26.9 million live streams, shattering its previous total daily streaming best set on Election Day 2008 with 5.3 million live streams. (Source: Omniture SiteCatalyst, global). Additionally, 3.6 million unique users spent a total of 16 million minutes on the CNN.com Live/Facebook video player on Inauguration Day. (Source: Nielsen Online Custom Data P2+ Home/Work).
iReport.com, CNN’s user-generated community, doubled its previous submission record of 5,100 set the day before the 2008 election with more than 11,300 photos and videos uploaded to the site on Inauguration Day. (Source: iReport.com internal data). Throughout the day, iReport submissions provided an added dimension and perspective to the network’s reporting of the inauguration on CNN’s television networks and fueled an array of coverage on CNN.com, including several photo galleries documenting the sights and sounds of inaugural celebrations around the world.
CNNPolitics.com registered 27.6 million global page views on Inauguration Day, which is 488% increase over the prior for weeks. Additionally, 2.4 million page views registered on the Political Ticker – the No.1 political news blog according to Nielsen Online – which is an 8% increase over the previous month. (Source: Omniture SiteCatalyst, global)
Registering its second highest day on record, the CNN Mobile Web site registered 4.6 million page views on Inauguration Day, a 92% increase over the prior four-week period. (Source: Crisp Wireless)
