Janet CollinsHow Michael Jackson Stopped Traffic
June 27th 2009 05:00
So interested were people around the globe to find information on the hospitalisation and death of Michael Jackson yesterday, that the millions and millions of people who jumped on line put unprecedented pressure on search engines, Google rating the Jackson-related searches as “volcanic”.
Yahoo reported that it’s front page story “Michael Jackson rushed to hospital” had 800,000 clicks within 10 minutes and it was its highest clicking story ever.
The deluge for information on Jackson alarmed Google so much that it was interpreted as a automated virus attack and for about 25 minutes, those searching for news on Jackson could only get a “We’re sorry” page before eventually finding the stories they were looking for.
It wasn’t only the search engines that were disrupted. AOL’s messaging service AIM went down for about 40 minutes under the strain and micro-blogging site Twitter suffered a slow down as thousands of of messages were exchanged by users every minute. Twitter co-founded was reported as saying that Jackson’s death had caused “the biggest jump in tweets per second since the US presidential election”.
It all started with TMZ, the American gossip website that broke the news Jackson had been taken to hospital. Interest in the story was so enormous it caused the site to close down temporarily. News then spread through blogs and social networking sites.
Sky News recorded more than twenty times the average number of visitors to its online site following Jackson’s death.
Michael Jackson’s life may have been controversial and many could only now see him as a faded celebrity who led a very weird life, but the worldwide interest in his death causing such a technology slowdown has been nothing short of remarkable.
Source: AFP in www.smh.com.au; www.skynews.com
Picture Credit: www.skynews.com
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Comment by Morgan Bell
Science News
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great descriptive word for the frenzy
i was quite shocked when i heard the news, my mum actually sent me an sms telling me, and i didnt quite believe it, it was so unexpected
Comment by Janet Collins
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Janet Collins Blog
I thought "volcanic" was a pretty good description for a rating too. I did hear it on the news myself even before they had announced that he had died and it shocked me too.