Over a lakh watch Jamboo Savari online worldwide

Dedicated portal draws people in 483 cities across the globe

While people scrambled along streets to get a glimpse of Dasara celebrations in the city on the Jamboo Savari day, about a lakh persons watched it in the comforts of their computers, tablets and cellphones.

Both Jamboo Savari and Torchlight Parade were streamed online on the dedicated website for Mysore Dasara,  www.mysoredasara.gov.in. The combined total of people, who watched these events online, was a whopping 98,191 from 483 cities around the world, including New York, Melbourne, Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, Houston, Taipei and Singapore. 

Among the cities in India, the highest number of visitors who watched the live streaming are from Bangalore.

Within a fortnight, since August 30, the website received more than a million hits. For developers of the website, however, the traffic was much more than expected, especially on the last day of Dasara.

One of the reasons for this ‘unexpected’ traffic, was that Dasara 2013 was promoted extensively on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, travel websites and other websites related to Mysore, said Kantharaj C, Chief Executive Officer of DotAngle, the company which developed the website.

Though promotion on Twitter did not go according to plan, the Facebook page for Mysore Dasara-2013 received a good 10,389 followers in a fortnight.

“The traffic for the site was higher than our expectations. On October 5, when Dasara festivities began, there were 68,000 visitors. On October 9, it was 70,000 plus. We thought the traffic on the last day would be less, as people watch it on television too. However, close to a lakh people visited the site on the day,” he said.

Apart from these, queries related to Dasara were also large in numbers. The team behind the website responded to 9,398 online and offline chats related to Dasara tickets, adventure sports, Palace entry and Hop on Hop Off services. “This too, was beyond our expectations,” Kantharaj said.

Encouraged by the response over 15 days of promotion prior to the Jamboo Savari, Kantharaj said promoting the event a bit earlier online will definitely attract more audience on the web.