Mobile broadband is critical in a time of disaster according to Norwegian browser maker Opera which claims Japanese usage of its software skyrocketed in the days following the earthquake.
Last month Japan was hit by one of the largest earthquakes in modern history, as well as a devastating tsunami which killed thousands and displaced millions.
“It could be argued that the need for information is only surpassed by the need for food, security and shelter, especially in the times of crisis,” said Jon von Tetzchner, the co-founder of Opera Software noting, “our logs showed a sharp increase in Opera Mini usage as information seekers in Japan sought out both news sources and certain corporate sites in the days following the earthquake.”
According to Opera’s State of the Mobile Web report, increase in visits to news-related sites shot up overnight, as one might expect, after the disaster, but other site increases proved more interesting.
On March 11, says the report, there was a massive upsurge in traffic for Twitter and Japanese meteorological sites, as people tried to get up to date with the most current information on the situation.
Two days after the earthquake, the website of TEPCO, the owner and operator of the Fukushima power plants, rose from obscurity into the top ten list of sites visited in March – owing to the nuclear crisis and rolling blackouts in Tokyo.
“Our findings this month serve to highlight even further the need for ubiquitous access to information, not just for daily living, but in response to the unimaginable,” said Tetzchner.
For its report, Opera examined the daily top sites visited by Opera Mini users in Japan, starting on March 10th (the day before the earthquake) through March 15th, making note of the sites that gained a large number of users or showed up suddenly in the daily top 10.
The following are the results:
Top sites in Japan for the month of February:
1. google.com
2. amazon.co.jp
3. yahoo.co.jp
4. mixi.jp
5. wikipedia.org
6. my.opera.com
7. livedoor.jp
8. hi5.com
9. youtube.com
10. ameblo.jp
(The list looked exactly the same in January)
Top sites in Japan for the month of March:
1. google.com
2. yahoo.co.jp (user growth: 40.6%, page view growth: 79.7%)
3. amazon.co.jp
4. mixi.jp
5. wikipedia.org
6. livedoor.jp (user growth: 33.8%, page view growth: 28.9%)
7. my.opera.com
8. youtube.com (user growth: 45.7% , page view growth: 29.3%)
9. ameblo.jp (user growth: 30.5% , page view growth: 8.4%)
10. twitter.com (user growth: 62.4% , page view growth: 83.7%)
Yahoo and Twitter showed the most impressive growth, according to the report, with large increases in both unique users and page views.
Yahoo, the report notes, served as an important news source and Twitter was used by individuals sharing information from multiple sources and communicating with each other in real time, as traditional communications channels became disrupted or overloaded.
Overall, concludes the report, Opera Mini page views in Japan increased by 27.6% between February and March, while unique users increased by 15.5%, and data transferred increased by 26.3%.
