As news of Michael Jackson’s death began to spread with internet speed last week, the huge numbers of people looking for information about the pop star overloaded several Web sites and services.
AIM, the instant messaging service operated by AOL, even collapsed for about 40 minutes during the hoopla, though they later said they were doing a scheduled update. The company called the day “a seminal moment in Internet history. We’ve never seen anything like it in terms of scope or depth.”
Twitter had thousands of real-time tweets about Michael Jackson every minute. “We saw more than double the normal tweets per second the moment the news broke — the biggest increase since the US presidential election (and Twitter has grown tremendously since then),” one of Twitter’s co-founders, Biz Stone, told The New York Times Bits blog.
Many were braced for something similar on Tuesday, when the memorial and tribute service was held in Los Angeles to celebrate the pop icon. But while the event drew millions of fans and spectators, both online and off, this time the Internet didn’t crack under the strain. Phew.
Traffic to news sites supported by Akamai peaked at 3.9 million visitors a minute at the start of the memorial service before sharply dropping off, suggesting that people were sticking with the live video streams rather than surfing around. By comparison, on June 25, when word began to circulate of Mr. Jackson’s hospitalization and death, Akamai said that traffic to news Web sites topped out at 4.2 million visitors a minute.
But the inauguration of President Obama in January still had more viewers, when the total live video streams topped out at more than 7 million. So now we know that on the internet, a new President still has more draw than a mourned king.
Tags: Internet Speed, Real-Time