By: Christopher Stango Election News Keeps People Online
In the midst of the nation's hotbed of presidential campaign bickering in Florida, GoPBI.com has become a mecca for political junkies everywhere eager to air their views on the site's interactive election forums.
"I've never seen our users so passionate about an issue," said Dan Shorter, general manager of Cox Interactive's South Florida Studio. At GoPBI.com, a partner with Cox's The Palm Beach Post and Palm Beach Daily News, they're "taking the power of the Internet and extending the basic story," Shorter added.
"People are pouring out their souls over this election," said Shorter. GoPBI.com introduced parody ballots and postcards, which have been a hit with thousands of users. These interactive options have kept traffic heavy at GoPBI.com, which is experiencing three to four times its normal levels without a hitch.
Last Friday, at the St. Petersburg Times' Web site, so many people were logged on to the site that it reached its capacity and would take minutes for pages to load. This worried Online Manager Ron DuPont, so the Web site disconnected its server for five minutes to make sure hackers were not involved. This congestion forced the St. Petersburg Times Online to increase its support service capacity by a third.
At Tampa Bay Online, a site affiliated with The Tampa Tribune, message boards have been filled with highly vocal community members who are arguing both sides of the election issue. "These message boards are put up whenever there is a hot topic in the community," said General Manager Kirk Reed, "but talk of the election is unparalleled." Reed added that he opened up this most recent message board to discuss George W. Bush's arrest for driving while under the influence of alcohol in the mid-1970s. General election talk eventually took over and has been vigorous since Election Night.
Online managers are hopeful that this temporary spike in traffic will lead to permanent growth. "Last week was a record week," said Bernard Gwertzman, editor of the New York Times on the Web.
The same is true for many newspapers' Web sites around the country. SF Gate, associated with the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner, set records for Internet traffic the weekend after Election Day, said site General Manager John Coate.
"Although it's been tiring," said the St. Petersburg Times Online's DuPont, "it's a good exhaustion."
Christopher Stango is an intern at E&P
Copyright 2000, Editor & Publisher.
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