The Michael Jackson Effect

The BBC had an interesting article on "Web Slows After Jackson's Death". Several websites crashed yesterday after so many people, all over the world, got on the internet at the same time to read about Michael Jackson's death. Millions of people got online between 2:30 PM and 3:30 PM Pacific Time -- around the time the news broke about his death. Google said that millions of people got an error page when they tried to access search results for Michael Jackson. The BBC reported that the traffic at their site at that time was 72% higher than normal. Twitter crashed as a result of high traffic. Trendrr, a web service that tracks social media sites, reported that the number of twitter posts on Thursday afternoon that contained "Michael Jackson" totaled more than 100,000 per hour. TMZ and Perez Hilton's site also crashed. In addition, the websites for AOL, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and Yahoo experienced a lag. Keynote Systems, an internet performance monitor, found that starting at 2:00 PM Pacific, "the average speed for downloading news sites doubled from less than four seconds to almost nine seconds...[and] during the same period, the average availability of sites on the index dropped from almost 100% to 86%"

This article made me think about how much of a global superstar Michael Jackson really was -- that upon the news of his death, the internet slowed and pages crashed because SO many people, globally, were checking out information on his death (at the same time). You can't say that about too many people. Yeah, he's had a lot (a lot, a lot) of issues of craziness and creepiness, and no one has wanted anything to do with him since like 1995. And I think the current craziness, scandals, and lack-of-any-hits almost makes us forget how huge of music legend he actually was. Thriller is the world's, all-time best selling album. That is amazing. He holds the Guinness World Record for "Most Successful Entertainer of All Time". He has 13 Grammy awards. We grew up in the generation when Michael Jackson was huge (when it was actually cool to like Michael Jackson). I remember watching MTV, hoping I could catch another viewing of the "Thriller" music video, even though it creeped me out. He was a huge cultural icon. His clothing, his dance moves, his music were all iconic. We all know what the Moon Walk is (several of us have attempted it, poorly). We could emulate at least one part of the dance from the Thriller music video (once again, poorly). We all recognize the sparkly glove. Weird Al parodied him. Everyone parodied him. And I think the final indicator of what an icon he was, was all these websites crashing because of an almost universal curiosity in reading about his death. As a big fan of popular culture, I find the response fascinating.