REDMOND, Wash., Nov. 5, 2008 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Msnbc.com shattered site records on election day, November 4, with nearly 250 million page views and over 20 million unique visitors.* The record-breaking spike in page views was more than twice the traffic of election day 2004 and more than four times the traffic of the 2006 mid-term election. This marks the site's highest traffic day in its 12-year history for both page views and unique visitors.
The "Decision '08 Dashboard," msnbc.com's one-of-a-kind destination for comprehensive election coverage, also broke site records with more than 107 million page views.* Consumers "voted" for politics.msnbc.com by turning to the site and to msnbc.com mobile for up-to-the-minute election coverage and real-time results, including electoral counts and exit polling across the country. Page views to msnbc.com's mobile site surged to more than three times the previous record.
Msnbc.com's innovative tools on the "Decision '08 Dashboard" empowered consumers by providing compelling and relevant resources they wanted to surface news in meaningful ways, including all-day live election coverage from MSNBC TV streamed on msnbc.com where users averaged 42 minutes per live stream session.** The site saw total video streams on election day surge to nearly 9 million streams.*** Msnbc.com's "Decision '08" election widget, with more than 6 million page views, enabled users to get live feeds of coverage across the Web.**** The site's exclusive "debate video player" allowed voters to watch the full presidential and vice presidential debates again, and, at any time skip ahead to a specific topic by selecting one of the key words. Msnbc.com is the only news provider offering this advanced video experience.
FirstRead (www.firstread.msnbc.com), the popular blog delivering the best insight on the day's political news, saw traffic spike to over 2 million page views as consumers followed NBC News' experts who generated 66 posts on election day.* And nearly 400,000 users participated in live votes on and discussions on Newsvine (www.newsvine.com), msnbc.com's leading social media news site.*
Msnbc.com's expansive election coverage featured original journalism, exclusive multimedia features, live votes, interactive maps that revealed results down to the county level, and world-class reporting and video from NBC News and MSNBC Cable. Visitors were engaged with the fuller spectrum of content on the site, spending 24 minutes per visit on average at politics.msnbc.com.*
According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center, more consumers get their political news from msnbc.com than any other online site. One out of every four people surveyed who said they got their campaign news online named msnbc.com as their source. Of the hundreds of sites users mentioned as sources for political news, msnbc.com was the only site to get over a 25% response. (Source: Pew Center for Research Study, 1/08).*****
Msnbc.com's game-changing, record-breaking day caps a year of successes for the site, including being named the #1 news site in America for the past 4 months running.******
About msnbc.com
Msnbc.com delivers a fuller spectrum of news. Drawing on its award-winning original journalism, NBC News heritage, trusted sources and Microsoft's advanced technologies, the site presents compelling, diverse and visually engaging stories on the consumer's platform of choice. Based in Redmond, WA, msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) and NBC Universal (NYSE:GE). According to Nielsen Online, msnbc.com was the number one Current Events and Global News site with more than 43 million unique visitors in September, 2008.
*Source: Omniture SiteCatalyst **Source: Limelight Networks ***Source: Nielsen Online, VideoCensus ****Source: ClearSpring *****Source: Pew Center for Research. ******Source: Nielsen Online