Category: Events

The Rise of Tumblr: A Major Force in Internet Traffic Generation

May 20th, 2013 by Cam Cullen
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    Yahoo (formally) announced that they intend to purchase Tumblr. Why would they spend that much money for a site that is at its heart a photo sharing site?

    Tumblr is now a major force in generating broadband traffic on the Internet. The snapshots below reflect the amazing growth in traffic to Tumblr. A brief look from one North American Fixed Line ISP reflects the massive growth in popularity of Tumblr, even eclipsing facebook.com in total traffic (even if fbcdn.net is added, Tumblr still wins by a huge margin). The first number represents the amount of traffic daily to the site, and the second is the number of connections daily.

    December 2011

    TumblrDec2011-ISP1

    May 2013

    TumblrMay2013-ISP1

    As you can see, Tumblr has experienced massive growth, with a five-fold increase in traffic over the time period . Tumblr’s own stats show that they have over 108M blogs on the site, with many of the blogs very active with a huge amount of daily views (again, views up almost 5x as well). From a traffic point of view, Tumblr ranks second overall on this ISP, with only YouTube generating more traffic daily, as shown below.

    TopSitesMay2013ISP1

    This trend is consistent on both Fixed and Mobile deployments that we see this pattern across our deployment footprint. Interestingly enough, most operators don’t complain about this as much as they do video traffic, and here is why:

    TopVideoMay2013ISP1

    As you can see, the amount of video traffic is about 76 times more than the total amount of traffic from Tumblr (although Tumblr is actually generating some of this traffic as they embed YouTube and other videos on the blogs). Now Yahoo just has to figure out how to monetize the site, as Google has proven can be done with advertising as well as the new pay channels for YouTube.

    Good luck to Yahoo in their quest to get eyeballs, and we will keep an eye on if this acquisition negatively affects the traffic to Tumblr.

    PSY makes the Internet a bit more “Gentleman-ly”

    April 15th, 2013 by Cam Cullen
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      The Internet is no longer all about Gangnam Style, it has become a bit more Gentleman- like. Unless you have been living in a cave, you have undoubtedly heard, heard of, or seen the video for Gangnam Style. It does have over 1 billion views:

      gangnamstyle

      PSY released his new single on YouTube over the weekend, and it is already off to a big start. It has over 62 million views (not quite a billion yet!):
      gentleman
      The question for broadband operators – did it effect their usage over the weekend?

      The answer is “Probably not” unless you were in specific places. A survey of our customer base in North America, South America, Europe and the Middle East did not see an overall rise in traffic (specifically video or YouTube). But APAC did see an increase – both on a day-over-day basis as well as over recent days.

      In one Southeast Asian mobile operator, YouTube traffic peaked 10% higher on the weekend from a normal weekend. Not massive, but significant.

      A fixed broadband network much closer to PSY’s home base was up even higher – with an increase of 30% over normal for HTTP Media streaming (preferred by Apple Devices).

      Consumer broadband networks were not the only ones that were affected – one South Korean university’s traffic was up almost 50% for the past weekend compared to earlier this month (although to be fair video consumption at the university has been creeping up since the beginning of April).

      It would be interesting to dig deeper into the stats to see which versions of the video are generating the most traffic. (unfortunately we did not have that setup on these networks, although it is possible). YouTube is offering seven different versions of the video (shown below):
      psygentlemenresolution
      YouTube and other content providers are becoming very good at presenting the optimum resolution for videos served to different devices – ensuring that both the correct format (i.e. Flash Video versus MP4) and the correct resolution is offered initially. This should have a very positive effect on bandwidth usage and optimization of bandwidth used by video, especially during times of congestion or for mobile subscribers trying to minimize usage to avoid cost.

      We’ll keep watching to see how this becomes popular over time.

      Go ahead – watch the video – you know you want to!

      Full House of Cards: Netflix New Online Series Analytics

      February 3rd, 2013 by Cam Cullen
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        There was much talk and hype for the online launch of the Netflix Original Series “House of Cards” throughout this week. Andrew Wallenstein (Variety) wrote an article about how Netflix needs to rethink their strategy about “binge” viewing – when a viewer. EW Weekly, Fast Company, and the New York Times also wrote about the topic – and opinions are varied if it was a good strategy to release the entire series in one shot or not.

        Well, I binge viewed the entire season (and I really enjoyed it!) – it is my favorite way to watch TV shows. It is one of the things I love the most about Netflix – the ability to watch an entire TV series (or occasionally a season) episode after episode is instant satisfaction – especially if you have not seen the shows before. What happens in the next episode? Find out in 10 seconds! Cliff hangers are immediately resolved!

        And it appears I was not the only one. Although Netflix traffic levels on the North American networks that Procera monitors did not go up significantly over the weekend, we were able to distinguish the House of Cards traffic from other Netflix traffic.  On one broadband network, 11% of Netflix subscribers watched at least one episode of the series. Below is a chart from Saturday on a second network (which is when most binge viewing occurred):

        HoCEpisodes

        Although each episode was not a major factor in overall traffic on this network (especially since the episodes are ~50 minutes long), in aggregate they add up. It is clear that the first few episodes were the most heavily watched, but the later episodes got their fair share of action. We even saw one subscriber on a network that consumed 16G of his usage on House of Cards over the weekend (hmm, how would that affect broadband caps?)

        On a different network, House of Cards spiked almost up to 5% of overall Netflix bandwidth usage as shown below (we started monitoring late in the day on Friday):

         HoCaspercentISP1

        Was the series launch a success for Netflix? Time will tell, but I really enjoyed the series and I think it reflected well that it got the “launch” ratings that it did. The question is if the series will have longevity with the binge viewing or not, and Netflix will surely be watching the replays of the show over time with the other new series that they have In the works (which I am really looking forward to some more Arrested Development!)

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