Mobile Web performance and availability slowed down soon after the news was released on Sunday that Osama Bin Laden was dead. But service was quickly back to normal, according to mobile and Internet monitoring company Keynote Systems.

Many United States citizens were alerted to the news soon after it was released either via a phone call from someone they know or via breaking news alert on their mobile phones. As a result, the various mobile news sites were hit at the same time by people who wanted to learn more about what was happening.

?This event, much like when Michael Jackson died, stopped people in their tracks,? said Dave Karow, senior product manager at Keynote Systems, San Mateo, CA. ?They wanted to communicate about the news and reached for what they had handy, which was a mobile phone.?

Many mobile Web sites experienced a slowdown Sunday night following the news about Mr. Bin Laden.

On average it took 25 percent longer than usual to download a requested site to a smartphone.

The availability of sites also dipped an average of 10 percent, meaning that one in 10 requests failed.

For one mobile site and two traditional Web sites, more than half of the people trying to get to the sites were unsuccessful.

However, between half-an-hour and two hours later, these sites were practically back to normal.

Performance reflects investment
?Clearly investments are being made in mobile infrastructure,? Mr. Karow said. ?There was more capability this year than for the previous big news event , Michael Jackson?s death, and more companies are stepping up to do mobile monitoring.?

The average response time posted by leading news and portal mobile Web sites for the week of April 25th were 3.15 seconds for Facebook, 3.46 seconds for Google and 5.68 seconds for Bing.

The sites with the best success rate were Yahoo, which successfully downloaded content to smartphone 99.42 percent of the time, The Weather Channel, with a 99.17 percent success rate and ESPN, with a 98.20 percent success rate.

Consumers relied on their mobile phones to get more about Mr. Bin Laden's death

The timing of the news meant that the biggest slowdowns in network performance took place on the West Coast. There was also a moderate amount of traffic in New York City, the city that never sleeps.

The instrumental role played by mobile phones, and in particular smartphones, in some of the public reactions that took place after the news was released point to the medium?s influence, per Mr. Karow.

?The spontaneous gatherings in Washington and New York City were examples where people used Twitter and other services on their mobile phones to spread the word,? Mr. Karow said.

?It was a phenomenon made more likely to happen because of mobile devices,? he said.

Keynote also tracked a lot of traffic from people carrying smartphones.

?When Michael Jackson died last year, smartphones were for the most part iPhones and only a select few carried them,? Mr. Karow said. ?One big difference for this event was that there were a heck of a lot more people on smartphones.?

Final Take
Keynote Systems on monitoring the cloud