Election Day 2008 represented many “firsts”. As more people document President Obama’s campaign team and their creative use of social media (Twitter, etc.), one aspect few have explored is the web infrastructure used to support the flurry of online activity. For MSNBC.com, Election Day 2008 represented the biggest day of traffic in it’s 12-year history with over 20 million unique viewers and 250 million page views. Wow.

When it comes to IT, it’s always fun to throw around big numbers. Well, these are indeed BIG numbers.

Here is a particularly interesting aspect that really speaks to the importance of actual site performance under heavy demand: this technology enabled MSNBC.com to increase viewer loyalty through improved website performance, resulting in 13.5 minutes spent per user on MSNBC.com compared to 10.5 minutes for CNN.com (Nielson Online).

Fascinating stuff. Big performance numbers for the IT team. Serious value for the business team.

Check out the just published case study (PDF) here on f5.com.

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