CNN.com’s Political News and User-Generated Platforms Score Traffic Records CNNPolitics.com, ’Political Ticker’ and iReport.com Set All-Time Highs with Announcement of McCain VP

On the day following the Democratic National Convention, CNN.com set multiple traffic records on its political news and user-generated platforms as users turned to the No. 1 news and information site for analysis of Sen. Barack Obama’s official acceptance speech the night before and breaking news of the highly anticipated announcement of Sen. John McCain’s running mate.

Overall, Friday, Aug. 29, represented one of the year’s highest traffic days for CNN.com, as well as its highest traffic day during the week of the Democratic National convention, generating more than 77 million page views and attracting 10 million unique visitors. CNN.com also served an impressive 4.9 million video streams, including nearly 529,000 live streams served through CNN.com Live.

Generating 16.1 million page views on Friday, Aug. 29, CNNPolitics.com, the online gateway to the network’s up-to-the-minute political coverage, had its highest traffic day since it launched just one year ago. CNNPolitics.com also reached another traffic milestone the week before the Democratic National Convention when it garnered its one billionth page view since its launch less than one year ago.

In the meantime, the CNN Political Ticker – the No. 1 political news blog according to Nielsen Online – reported its highest trafficked day ever on Friday, Aug. 29, with 2.96 million page views as users turned to the Ticker for the highly anticipated announcement of Sen. John McCain’s running mate. This is the second time in a week that the Political Ticker has generated record page views, and the fifth time in the last two weeks the blog has generated more than 2 million page views per day.

Additionally, two opinion pieces regarding McCain’s selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for his running mate published on Friday were widely read on CNN.com. Paul Begala’s tongue-in-cheek take on McCain’s choice, “Is McCain out of his mind?”, generated more than 1.75 million page views, and Ed Rollins’ defense of the McCain-Palin ticket, “McCain’s brilliant, but risky, choice for VP,” brought in more than 1.35 million page views.

On Friday, iReport.com experienced its largest volume of submissions on record, and also had one of its highest traffic days ever with 2.3 million page views. On Friday alone, iReport.com received 845 submissions in response to McCain’s selection of Palin as his running mate, a record number of submissions for a single news event in a 24-hour period. Additionally, iReport.com reached a milestone in terms of the number of new registered users in one day, with nearly 5,900 people opening iReport.com accounts on Friday bringing the total number of registered iReporters to more than 98,000.