Akamai Helps WeeWorld Cut Page Load Times by up to 30 Percent

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 1, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Akamai Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: AKAM), the leading provider of cloud optimization services, today announced that WeeWorld, the popular global social game, has seen an 8-30 percent reduction in page load times through its use of Akamai's Rich Media Accelerator solution. With a highly dynamic and interactive site, WeeWorld turned to Akamai to deliver a fast, reliable experience for their global user base.

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WeeWorld.com is a fast growing avatar social game in the United States and serves a global audience of teens who flock to the site to customize their WeeMee avatars, socialize, play games and chat.  The site serves large quantities of rich, interactive and dynamic content including animations, video, and graphics, which users use to express themselves by customizing their accounts.  WeeWorld needed to ensure consistent site load times for its 40 million users and keep them engaged by eliminating any variation in load times between regions. Richer content slows page downloads and can even lead to site abandonment. Akamai's acceleration solution gives customers increased site and application performance and handles the specific requirements of dynamically-generated content—without a costly hardware buildout.

Lauren Bigelow, WeeWorld Chief Operating Officer, said, "We wanted to increase the speed of our page load times globally. We needed a solution that could allow us to accelerate the dynamic, interactive elements of our rich media assets and the core web pages themselves, improving the overall user experience across the globe."

Since offloading content and delivering it closer to the user through Akamai's distributed network of over 77,000 servers, WeeWorld.com has seen a cut in page load times averaging 8-15 percent in the United States, 20 percent globally, and in some regions, such as Europe, pages load nearly 30 percent faster.  Users are also spending more time on WeeWorld.com, with session times increasing by an average 10 percent since switching to Akamai.

Bigelow continued, "The Akamai approach made sense. We knew we had to get our content closer to users to achieve the desired improvements in speed and consistency, especially given the large amount of dynamically-generated content we deliver. Akamai has also proved cost-effective, giving us the best of both worlds when coupled with the performance improvements we have seen."

Natalie Billingham, Digital Media Industry Manager for Northern Europe at Akamai, added, "Modern Internet users are demanding and expect websites to be highly responsive, irrespective of the content being delivered.  Companies cannot afford to deliver a poor user experience, and we look forward to working with WeeWorld as their business continues to expand globally."

About WeeWorld

WeeWorld (www.weeworld.com) is a popular social game for teens with a mainstream appeal, reaching a global audience of more than 40M registered WeeMees. WeeWorld's goal is to provide a fun, visual environment that encourages self-expression and creativity. The WeeMee Avatar Creator is the #1 avatar on the iPhone and is consistently ranked as one of the top-selling social networking apps in the Apple app store. Through an expansive palette of features, clothes, accessories, hobbies, etc., WeeWorld users can create their personalised WeeMee avatar, connect with friends, decorate their own visual space, send animated messages, play games and more. Thanks to WeeWorld's open platform, WeeMees are portable to all major social networks and blogging sites, in addition to instant messaging platforms, e-mail signatures and mobile phones. WeeWorld has offices in Boston, New York City, London and Glasgow, and is funded by Accel Partners (www.accel.com) and Benchmark Capital (www.benchmark.com).

About Akamai

Akamai® provides market-leading, cloud-based services for optimising Web and mobile content and applications, online HD video, and secure e-commerce. Combining highly-distributed, energy-efficient computing with intelligent software, Akamai's global platform is transforming the cloud into a more viable place to inform, entertain, advertise, transact and collaborate. To learn how the world's leading enterprises are optimising their business in the cloud, please visit www.akamai.com and follow @Akamai on Twitter.

SOURCE Akamai Technologies, Inc.