Cold on the heels of the recent avalanche of snow that blanketed West Virginia University and the surrounding area came another kind of storm.

But this one brought better results: Visits to WVU’s mobile Web site (http://m.wvu.edu/) – available to any cell phone with internet access, including Blackberries and iPhones – have increased dramatically in the past week, along with hits to WVUToday (http://wvutoday.wvu.edu/), the University’s online information source.

According to Dave Olsen, a professional technologist with WVU’s University Relations/Web Services, the emergency information, which would normally see only 100 visits in a week, was accessed more than 5,700 times during the storm. Overall, mobile traffic has increased nearly four-fold during the recent snow storms that have covered the area. The information available includes weather reports, University closures, PRT status reports, event postponements and more.

“We set new page view records daily while giving the University community access to vital information,” Olsen said. “And we didn’t leave things static. We updated information often so people received the most accurate and comprehensive reports.”

Although the snow continues to pile, WVU is able to keep pace with its own downpour of information in a wide variety of formats. Along with web-based and mobile information, students, staff and faculty can also gather news from tweets and WVU-run social networking sites (http://twitter.wvu.edu; http://facebook.wvu.edu), the digital information stations around campus, the intranet (http://www.intranet.wvu.edu/) and an email listserv. Hits on WVUToday increased from around 13,000 to 57,000 in the past week as it featured the latest weather-related news.

-WVU-

ds/02/12/10

CONTACT: WVU News & Information Services
304-293-6997