Web lights up with Tiger talk CNN International
(CNN) -- The Internet lit up with comments Friday as people rushed to weigh in on Tiger Woods' much-anticipated public apology for his marital indiscretions.
Twitter and Google traffic spiked as Woods began his statement at 11 a.m. ET Friday.
Online opinion about the scripted remarks -- which were streamed live on several Web sites, including CNN, Ustream, YouTube and Hulu -- was split. Some people found Woods' apology to be sincere, while others mocked the world's most famous golfer.
More than 680,000 people watched the 15-minute event on Ustream, according to that site's spokeswoman, Shari Foldes, who said viewership would have been higher had Woods' statement not been so brief.
By comparison, 4.6 million Ustream viewers watched last summer's live memorial service for pop star Michael Jackson, which lasted about an hour and a half.
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More than 1,000 Twitter posts per minute contained the word "Tiger" during the speech, according to the Web site Trendrr, which tracks online traffic. In total, nearly 94,000 tweets were posted about Tiger Woods during the 11 a.m. ET hour, according to data from a Trendrr spokesman.
On microblogs like Twitter, comments about Woods were mostly neutral; positive and negative reactions to his speech balanced each other out with a 1 to 1 ratio, according to socialmention.com , a Web site that tracks online opinion. Blogs responded more positively to Woods' statements, at least immediately after the speech, the site said.
