Space shuttle news remains hot and heavy in the news with thousands upon thousands of stories about the trials and tribulations of the Discovery’s current mission. One significant angle not mentioned much so far is the Internet coverage of the launch.
This is the first time this type of round the clock coverage has been offered by NASA online so people can tune in anytime they wish to view what’s going on the shuttle. The live feeds are pretty amazing as both sites circulate various images from the shuttle missions, including spectacular views of earth, the footage examining the shuttle for possible damage, and views of the various innards of the shuttle at work.
The big hit for both groups was during the launch itself. Anyone who went through NASA’s link new that was the Yahoo feed. The speed went from about 90 kb to 30 kb in a manner of seconds and Yahoo said they had 335,000 streams running at one time. As of this story, AOL was not prepared to reveal its metrics for the launch to murdok.
This makes a real payday for NASA in terms of viewers too. They 118,000 streams for Deep Impact and fewer than 50,000 for the Mars Exploration Rover back in January 2004. Assuming NASA continues this trend in the future, this could be a great payoff for NASA and maybe even a source for some additional funding.
The important aspect though is the revenue gained by Yahoo and AOL. This will provide solid numbers for a major media event and give the companies some solid marketing in the process. This is yet another route for portal and search entities to generate revenues.
While Yahoo and AOL and others might not have reporters on the scene with each breaking news event, planned events like this one do quite well for the two companies and allow them not only increase their revenue but also increase their marketshare. With the 335,000 hits on Yahoo, a lot of which would be because they supplied from NASA’s site, Yahoo will more than likely pick up a few new customers.
A couple of days after the event, having watched the coverage initially and had time to think about it. In many ways, the multiview split screen put together by AOL was probably the best look of the launch. Yahoo had all the views, just one at a time. When the shuttle flew, the multiview feature allowed users to see the launch from all different angles and was really a great look view and that multiview continues until they astronauts were in space.
As the mission continues, this will be the best way to cover the event. If anything dramatic were to happen, no breakaways from your daytime television for a SPECIAL REPORT. It’s there and you can watch the events unfold. One has to assume that more and more feeds like this will appear on the Internet and these companies, no longer merely just search or portals become full-fledged, big-time media companies that compete with the news networks and the telecommunications companies, these feeds will be one more feather in their cap.
John Stith is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
