• by June 29, 2004

The temperature is rising on Fahrenheit 9/11. So is the traffic to MichaelMoore.com, fahrenheit911.com and f911tix.com.

MichaelMoore.com drew 101,000 visitors yesterday, an increase of 114 percent versus last Monday, according to comScore Media Metrix. Online traffic peaked last Friday, June 25 (the movie's opening day), when 85,000 unique visitors flocked to fahrenheit911.com, 62,000 went to MichaelMoore.com, and 80,000 landed at f911tix.com, comScore reports.

In New York City, theaters running the film are playing to sellout crowds. Virtually the only way to ensure a ticket to a showing that's not at 11:30 p.m., is to go online. That's exactly what I did on Sunday morning June 27 when I went to Fandango.com. I appreciated the speed and ease of the transaction.

Hitwise, a provider of online intelligence services, finds that 52 percent of visitors to fahrenheit911.com are going to f911tix.com, the online ticket service. "One of the things that's [also] interesting is that a lot of them are coming from Michael Moore's site," says Bill Tancer, Hitwise's VP-research.

Hitwise finds that from June 12-25, fahrenheit911.com saw an increase in market share of U.S. visits of 343 percent to become the top official movie site in the Hitwise movie category on June 25, 2004. The site captured 1.06 percent of U.S. visits to movie sites, ahead of Harry Potter (harrypotter.warnerbros.com), which logged 1.05 percent.

Fahrenheit's director, Michael Moore, has enjoyed more traffic to his personal website than fahrenheit911.com has attracted: Traffic to MichaelMoore.com surged by 418 percent from June 12-26, according to Hitwise data.

The film raked in $21.8 million on its opening weekend to top the weekend box office. And that's a figure for a film that only opened in some 800 theaters in the U.S.

I don't want to get into a political debate over this film. Maybe that's because I received a nasty letter after I wrote about Bill Clinton's book. The writer accused me of an implied political bias when I described the former president as a "rock star" and vowed never to read the Minute again.