That incredible traffic the California Obamacare exchange website received on day one? Yeah, not so much.
.@latimes: California exchange overstated its Web traffic for #Obamacare launch http://t.co/ViXPpOBzrf #NotAGlitch
— Diane Black (@RepDianeBlack) October 3, 2013
MAJOR: 5 million hits at Calif's Obamacare exchange? Nope. CA officials are RETRACTING that. Real number: 645,000 http://t.co/fYiiO5tslX
— Maeve Reston (@MaeveReston) October 3, 2013
5 million … 645,000 … easy mistake to make. A spokesman for Covered California explained, “Someone misspoke and thought it was indeed 5 million hits. That was incorrect.”
Someone also “misspoke” on the marketplace’s Twitter feed.
By 3 p.m. about 5 million page hits were made to our website and 17,000 calls made to our service centers. #CoveredCA #GetCovered
— Covered California (@CoveredCA) October 1, 2013
The enrollment section of our website will be down from 9 pm until early am to optimize performance. 5 million page hits today. #CoveredCA
— Covered California (@CoveredCA) October 1, 2013
Those tweets have not been deleted and Covered California has not tweeted a correction.
Check out the absurdly inflated number gleefully promoted by Senior White House communications adviser Tara McGuinness and her two exclamation points:
Covered California, enrolled first person at 8:46 a.m. – Peter Lee, the marketplace’s ED said site getting 10,000 hits every second!!
— T. McGuinness (NARA) (@Tara44) October 1, 2013
Press secretary Jay Carney also tried selling that number when he retweeted McGuinness .
Covered California, enrolled first person at 8:46 a.m. – Peter Lee, the marketplace’s ED said site getting 10,000 hits every second!!
— T. McGuinness (NARA) (@Tara44) October 1, 2013
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A screenshot to remember Carney’s retweet by:
Wow! Obamacare really is popular in California! Or not:
https://twitter.com/JohnTMadden/status/385359760003854337
As it turns out, traffic peaked at 16,000 hits per minute (if the revised numbers are to be believed). Fascinating that McGuinness, a former Center for American Progress exec, didn’t retweet that information.
While we wait for her to issue a correction (and we’re not holding our breath), let’s hear from CBS’ Jan Crawford about what led to “glitches” when the marketplaces rolled out:
@instapundit @jaketapper @GPollowitz Me either. Top story could well be how "high demand" led to glitches, not bureaucratic incompetence.
— Jan Crawford (@JanCBS) October 3, 2013
“High demand”?
@BuzzFeedAndrew @JanCBS @instapundit @jaketapper @GPollowitz LoL Like California which lowered their claim of 5 Million Visitors to 600K
— Rob Tam (@robtr2) October 3, 2013
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