We noted yesterday that Rich Miller had predicted trouble on election night for sites like FiveThirtyEight that hosted on free/cheap sites like Blogger. Well, score one for Rich — FiveThirtyEight was noticeably slower than its peers all night long, earning this rebuke from the site’s Sean Quinn:
One does wonder why Blogger’s owner Google, of all people, is consistently unable to handle large surges of traffic. It’s always so sad to see a news site’s servers struggle with the moments that should be their finest: when the whole world descends.
Also note that, as one might have predicted, last night broke the all-time record for most traffic to online news sites. The peak moment: Right at 11 p.m. EST, when the networks declared it for Obama.