Sarah Burns

Snapchat was the most used social media channel in terms of data transfer amongst Wi-Fi users during the Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann in Ennis earlier this month.

Clare County Council said 13.8 per cent of the more than one million megabytes of data transferred during the traditional music festival was accounted for by Snapchat, a mobile app that allows users send pictures and messages which disappear after a few seconds.

The council’s public Wi-Fi service was launched two days before the Fleadh, which took place in the town from August 13th-21st.

Facebook (10.6 per cent), YouTube (6.6 per cent), Twitter (1 per cent) and Instagram (0.4 per cent) lagged behind the popular social media channel in usage terms. Google+, Vimeo, Skype, Tumblr, Pinterest and Spotify collectively accounted for less than one per cent of all data used.

Overall, iCloud was the most popular application making up 15.9 per cent of all data transferred during the 397,583 unique sessions recorded on the public service.

Saturday, August 19th generated the most traffic on the service when more than 69,000 individual sessions were recorded while data usage peaked during Michael Flatley’s appearance on stage for the official opening of Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann on Sunday, August 13th. Operated by Clare County Council and supported by members of Ennis Chamber of Commerce, the public can log onto the free Wi-Fi service at several town locations including Parnell Street and Carpark, Abbey Street and Carpark, the Market area, O’Connell Street and O’Connell Square.

Urban McMahon, Clare County Council Broadband Officer said the response from the Wi-Fi service users “has been very positive”.

“The Wi-Fi hotspots have been designed to provide members of the public visiting Ennis with a free, easily accessible and reliable internet service,” Mr McMahon said.

“The feedback received from visitors to the town who have logged on to the service has been excellent with many saying that it added to their overall Fleadh experience in Ennis.”