Yahoo reports that is breaking records in terms of traffic and video consumption. Requests per second at the online media company have surpassed previous records, with 40,000 request per second compared to 33,000 per second during the Japan Earthquake. It also reported an all-time record for live video traffic, beating the previous record, the Michael Jackson funeral, by 21 percent. Yahoo also reported record video traffic in the EU and in APAC.
Social network sites like Twitter and Facebook were not immune from the royal wedding coverage. Twitter counted more than 2 million tweets related to the royal wedding. Facebook reports more than 6.8 million users mentioned the wedding in their status updates.
This is the first royal wedding to be covered in such a way. Internet company Livestream, which is partnered with Associated Press, CBS and the Press Association, said the event broke its own records, with more than 330,000 concurrent viewers at one point.
"We are expecting the final analytics to show at least two million unique viewers throughout the service on livestream.com for the full ceremony," a spokesman said. The BBC website, which was also showing live coverage, was struggling under the strain Friday morning, intermittently flashing an error message during the ceremony saying the site was experiencing "abnormal traffic".
As expected, the wedding of Prince William and Katherine Middleton has broken Internet records. The BBC traffic was eight times higher than normal and O2, Vodafone and T-Mobile also peaked to near breaking point, according to Keynote Systems.
The Associated Press said that millions followed the live video streams on computers and left comments on social media sites. The royal family’s own web site broadcast the event live, as did YouTube. Clarence House, the prince’s official residence, offered live tweets.
