January 20, 2009 10:53 PM PST
Obama inauguration traffic not good for everyone
While dozens of social and media Web sites saw high or record traffic on President Obama's Inauguration Day, not all Web sites shared the wealth. At least one commercial online hosting service saw its customers take a beating during the ceremony. MerchantCircle (review), which hosts small business Web sites, saw a dramatic drop in traffic to its sites. Once the meat of the inauguration started to wind down, though, it looks like people went back to their usual browsing and buying behaviors.
Traffic to MerchantCircle sites spiked downward during the inauguration ceremony.
(Credit: MerchantCircle)
Rafe Needleman writes about start-ups, new technologies, and Web 2.0 products, as editor of CNET's Webware. E-mail Rafe. 
