M-Net`s Idols Web site is quietly picking up in popularity, even though the site has not yet been advertised. Since its weekend launch, the site has attracted 11 000 registered users, the majority of whom are women over the age of 40.
Glenn van Loggerenberg, M-Net`s new media strategist, says the "early adopters" of the site are "majority female over 40 by a couple of hundred", and says he is surprised to see this emerging trend. Of the early adopters, "just about all have signed up for our e-mail service, and about three-quarters have opted for SMS alerts too".
So far, the on-demand video streams have proved popular, with requests in the thousands for the variable-quality video.
Andr'e Retief, CIO of Naspers, says special consideration was made in the placement of the server farm hosting the Idols site, so that all South African users, regardless of Internet service provider (ISP), will have fast access to the site.
Currently positioned in Doornfontein, the site goes through UUNet (M-Web`s backbone provider), and is connected to JINX (Johannesburg Internet Exchange) at M-Net`s own cost. Retief says JINX only accounts for approximately 10% of the site`s traffic.
He also advises corporate IT managers to either ask their ISPs to limit or cut access to the site, or do it themselves on the company`s router, as the video streams can account for significant network traffic on a corporate network - up to 56k per stream.
Exact statistics of the site are still unavailable due to the distributed nature of the hosting environment.
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