[Back to things we care about] ‘Network deprivation’ causes the Internet’s rush hour
August 12th, 2009 by Dave StudinskiMorning is the Internet’s drivetime/primetime reports NYTimes.com. The rush results from American’s few hours of sleep each night, which causes what the Times coined as “network deprivation.”
Arbor Networks, a Boston company that analyzes Internet use, says that Web traffic in the United States gradually declines from midnight to around 6 a.m. on the East Coast and then gets a huge morning caffeine jolt. “It’s a rocket ship that takes off at 7 a.m,” said Craig Labovitz, Arbor’s chief scientist.
Akamai, which helps sites like Facebook and Amazon keep up with visitor demand, says traffic takes off even earlier, at around 6 a.m. on the East Coast. Verizon Wireless reported the number of text messages sent between 7 and 10 a.m. jumped by 50 percent in July, compared with a year earlier.
One source for the story serves as a poster child for this technical thirst and its affect on print media.
“It used to be you woke up, went to the bathroom, maybe brushed your teeth and picked up the newspaper,” said Naomi S. Baron, a professor of linguistics at American University, who has written about technology’s push into everyday life. “But what we do first now has changed dramatically. I’ll be the first to admit: the first thing I do is check my e-mail.”
So is post-midnight still the happy hour for porn? I think we need more research.
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