Big Brother pulls big online audience

Johannesburg, 29 Aug 2001

Bigbrothersa.com, the online counterpart of the Big Brother television show, is claiming an audience far beyond the experience of local media sites, not to mention beyond the proprietor`s expectations.

Oracle Online Sales, the company responsible for advertising and sponsorship on the site, says 62 000 people have registered their details at the site in the last three days. The site has seen 1.5 million page impressions in the same period and 240 000 multimedia streams have been requested.

According to the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Internet Standards, many moderately successful local Web sites average between one and two million impressions over the space of a month.

Oracle Online Sales says the rate of registration has not dipped significantly yet, although it is expected to slow down soon.

"It picked up again this morning," says Oracle Online GM Richard Fyffe. "There have been some technical problems and bandwidth issues, so we think a lot of people are coming back to try again and more traffic is going through the site."

He says additional capacity has been brought online to deal with the glut of users and the site`s performance has been improved drastically.

Although the major sponsorships on the site had been sold at fixed prices months in advance of its launch, Fyffe says the possibility of selling the excess inventory now generated is being looked at. The income the site is expected to generate has not been revealed, but it is believed that at least two multimillion-rand deals were concluded. Additional advertising sales will enhance what Fyffe describes as a "successful" exercise.

Fyffe is also impressed with the impact the technology used has had on the local scene.

"This is the first time a mass market has been created for streaming media," he says of the 240 000 streams requested. "My gut feel is that many of these people would never have used streaming media before in their lives, and certainly would not have streamed anything from SA, so that is already a huge benefit."

However, many users still don`t have access to the streaming media on offer due to the inability of their networks or service providers to accommodate multicast streaming.

ISP UUNet today issued a statement to clarify the part it played in the activation of multicast capabilities, or the lack thereof. Confusion ensued when M-Web, which was subcontracted on the site by M-Net, said all local first-tier ISPs had declined to upgrade their infrastructure for multicasting.

UUNet says it worked closely with M-Web to develop a method to disseminate the video streams. It also said it was working with other ISPs to make the content available to more users.