OSCON Alumnus Graeme Merrall is now an architect at News Digital Media (a Rupert Murdoch company based in Australia). He dropped this tidbit in conversation:
In 2004 news.com.au served more traffic every day than we served on
9/11. When Shapelle Corby was found guilty we trebled our normal
traffic and we now serve more than that every day. When Steve Irwin
died we trebled our traffic again and we’re already half way up to
that peak every day now. It’s a slashdot effect that never seems to
end :)
We like to talk about the death of old media and the emergence of new models, but count out the established companies at your peril. Those growth rates are a wakeup call to anyone who pictures News Corp and other big-in-print companies as dinosaurs thrashing their last as the mammals are evolving around them.