People used the Internet as a gateway for information directly following last week’s devastating terrorist attacks.
Internet sites continued to be hit with a large volume of visitors several days after the attacks as people looked for resources and ways to help the relief efforts in New York and Washington, D.C.
Two Tacoma Web sites saw dramatic increases in site traffic. Brandon Fix, CEO of Tacoma’s DonationDepot.com, said that after both Yahoo.com and MSN.com linked to them from their front pages as a way to donate to the Fireman’s Fund, he had to scramble to boost Donation Depot’s server capacity and mirror his site on many more servers just to keep the site open.
Fix says this week saw far and away more donation transactions than any other week in their three-year history.
Tacoma-based technology broadcast WebTalkGuys Radio saw traffic to its Web site triple the day of the attack.
The site carries extensive tech news, but not traditional news.
Since the broadcast and Web site are linked from MSN’s talk radio network, it’s believed that net surfers were accessing WebTalkGuys in hopes of news of the terrorist attacks.
Some coverage was added within a few hours of the attack to help satisfy the demand.
“We’ve seen streaming news/talk stations increase their audience size as much as 40 times,” said Sven Haarhoff of Portland’s Mearurecast.com, an audience measurement tracking company for Internet broadcasters.
Dana Greenlee’s regular column about technology appears every Friday in the Tacoma Daily Index.