Tweeps weeping over Jackson’s death

Posted on July 14th, 2009 by sherrilynne
Some say it rivals the deaths of Diana and Elvis as a ‘remember where you were when you heard the news’ moments.
For millions and millions of people around the world, hearing news of the sudden death of Michael Jackson was like hearing about an old friend.  But this time it was different.

This time, people scrambled onto the internet for confirmation of the terrible news and within minutes of the story breaking, the world wide web trembled under the pressure.

Celebrity gossip website TMZ.com was among the first to confirm the news.  On 25 June at 5.20 pm (Pacific), well before the national TV networks, the site reported, ‘We’ve just learned Michael Jackson has died. He was 50. Michael suffered a cardiac arrest earlier this afternoon at his Holmby Hills home and paramedics were unable to revive him.’

The sheer volume of traffic generated by the news soon took the site down.  But the news continued to spread like wildfire via Twitter, Facebook and the blogs of fans worldwide.  The number of status updates on Facebook tripled for the first hour after MJ’s death was announced. Michael Jackson quickly trended to the top of Twitter; he featured in 90 per cent of topics of discussion during that hour.

And, 25 minutes after TMZ.com broke the news, Twitter began to creek under the surge of tweets and users saw the Fail Whale, the service’s graphic that is presented when the site is overloaded, for much of the next hour.

The Google search engine went into defensive mode, believing it was under attack as people sought news of Jackson’s death.  Users were served up warnings and malware alerts. A company spokesperson described the traffic as volcanic.

He told Zdnet.co.uk, ‘When you get huge volumes of searches, an interstitial page comes up to make sure we aren’t coming under attack. The volumes searching for Michael Jackson during the night (of his death) were such that a page did come up, and it slowed things down for a short period.’  When it came time for Michael Jackson’s funeral, social media sites had had almost two weeks to prepare for what some were calling the biggest online event in history.

Click here to read the rest of this Tech Talk column.

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