Akamai works with dozens of leading social media destination sites, as well as key technologies and applications that form this global ecosystem, including Bebo, Facebook, Friendster, Metacafe, MySpace, RockYou, Slide, and Tagged. Many of these companies were previously using other Content Delivery Networks or leveraging in-house technology, but over the last year realized their growth had surpassed the ability of those solutions to continue to manage the delivery and acceleration needs of their sites. Akamai works closely with customers on business initiatives related to content monetization, uploading and downloading of large files, and application development to ensure they can offer the most dynamic and interactive sites possible.

The social media industry recently witnessed a massive tidal wave of adoption, and many companies realized their technology infrastructure would not be able to handle the unplanned, dramatic growth, and turned to Akamai. Social networking initially proved successful as a pure entertainment medium, but in 2007 it grew into a powerful way to influence consumers through advertising and brand awareness campaigns to engage audiences around the globe. In 2008, industry analysts predict further growth and sharing of social applications, including slideshows, video and others. As innovation continues to spur newfound ways to leverage this powerful medium, the growth in traffic and infrastructure demands on these sites will continue to grow at an unforeseen rate.

Application Development and Growth

Akamai customer, Slide, saw firsthand the traffic growth and success companies in this space can experience. Slide widgets, including Slideshows, FunWall and Super Poke, are popular on the world’s top social networking and blog platforms. The personal media network is also the leading application provider on Facebook with more than 50 million unique users each month (Quantcast).

“Slide is all about building the best and most engaging applications, and Akamai helps us focus on our core business,” said Ken Brownfield, Director of IT at Slide. “Traffic to the Slide network has grown more than 500 percent this past year. Our already heavily-tuned load times were decreased by an additional 50-75% by utilizing Akamai, which is critical for an ideal user experience. We've been very happy with the performance and reliability of their solutions.”

RockYou is another Akamai customer developing and publishing widgets and applications on the Web. The provider’s widgets include photo slideshows, glitter text, voicemail accessories and custom Facebook applications that enable people to frequently personalize their online style and engage with friends. With more than 38 million users, RockYou serves over 180 million widget views per day in more than 200 countries.

"RockYou has worked with Akamai for close to two years. When our relationship started, our user base was exploding internationally, and site performance was critical. Akamai delivered," said Jia Shen, CTO and co-founder of RockYou. "Akamai has continued to meet our needs at every turn. The company can seamlessly deal with scale and performance issues that directly correlate to key business initiatives that no other provider was able to support."

“Our ability to manage the massive growth in social networking is a true testament to the value that the Akamai platform and solutions bring social media companies. Over the last year, many of these companies saw not only unexpected growth, but considerably enhanced their sites to include more rich and dynamic features,” said Tim Napoleon, Chief Strategist, Media and Entertainment at Akamai. “With social media sites becoming increasingly interactive, Akamai is continually innovating to support the technology requirements driven by this evolving segment.”

The Akamai Difference for Social Networking

Akamai delivers a platform for expansion, innovation and exploration, enabling the world’s leading social media companies to succeed. Social media organizations rely on Akamai to overcome business and technical challenges associated with delivering, storing, and managing significant amounts of unique and dynamic content, as well as supporting unprecedented levels of Web site traffic. Akamai provides instant infrastructure for upload, download and delivery of content and application acceleration, enabling them to focus on their core business. For more information, please visit http://www.akamai.com/socialnetworking

Akamai Statement Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act

The release contains information about future expectations, plans and prospects of Akamai Technologies, Inc.'s management that constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors including, but not limited to, the effects of any unexpected difficulty in closing our financial books for the quarter and other factors that are discussed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and other documents periodically filed with the SEC