MICHAEL JACKSON'S OBITUARY

JACKSON'S OBITUARY SWAMPED AND SPIKED TRAFFIC OVER NET









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Did your Internet connection seem slow Thursday afternoon? It wasn’t problem of ur computer, it was the surge of interest in Michael Jackson’s hospitalization ,treatment and death.

When news of the iconic performer's death began trickling out, scores of people turned to the Web for information. when a channel broke the news that Jackson, 50, known for producing some of the world's best selling records, including "Thriller" and "Bad," had died Thursday afternoon, but the gossip hub cited only unnamed sources and offered few details. As other news services turned their attention to the story and as the public took to the Web to learn more about the performer's condition, some Web sites began slowing down.
As news of Michael Jackson’s death began to spread last Thursday, the crush of people flocking to the Web for information overloaded several Web sites and services, causing AOL’s instant messaging service, news sites, Twitter and Wikipedia to buckle under the strain.

But just how much traffic are we talking about? Compete, a Web analytics firm based in Boston, crunched some numbers and came up with a few data points to help illustrate the surge.It found that there were 9.98 million queries for the terms “Michael” and “Jackson” across the top 25 search engines and news and social media sites in the week ended June 27. Compete said that was more than 24 times the number of queries for information using the terms “Iran” and “election” during the week before. Google, which said that its systems initially interpreted the spike in searches as an attack, fielded the most requests, handling 61 percent of the queries. Yahoo Music pulled in a hefty 45 percent of Web surfers seeking the pop maestro’s albums, music videos and merchandise, according to Compete. YouTube ranked a distant second with 23 percent. Compete said Yahoo’s dominance was probably a result of spillover from its coverage of Mr. Jackson’s hospitalization. Yahoo said its coverage broke traffic records, generating 800,000 clicks in the first 10 minutes that the story was posted. The increase in interest in Mr. Jackson’s legacy has been reflected in record-shattering sales of music, both online and at retail stores.

Akamai said that traffic to news Web sites spiked around 6 p.m. Eastern, clocking in at one point at 4.2 million visitors per minute. During the rest of the day, the sites tracked by Akamai never exceeded 3 million visitors per minute. Some entertainment news Web sites including EOnline.com and PerezHilton.com appeared to load more slowly than normal. Sometimes they did not load at all, according to the observations of several reporters early Thursday evening. Even Google had trouble keeping up. Between 5:40 p.m. and 6:15 p.m. Eastern, after TMZ.com had said Mr. Jackson had died, some visitors to Google News “experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson,” a Google spokesman said.

Reminiscence @ MICHAEL AT THE AGE OF 5 - 1970

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