26 June 2009 | Author: R. Falconer SEO Consultant
Last night, the news that the "King of Pop", Michael Jackson, had been rushed to hospital following a cardiac arrest broke out.
Entertainment site TMZ broke the story at around 10.20pm GMT, but the death was not confirmed by other new sources until around half an hour later. The news spread like wildfire across the internet and the first website be majorly affected was, of course, Twitter - which again proved its value as a real time search engine.
Within minutes of the news breaking, the trending term "Michael Jackson" had knocked 'iranelection' from the top. Strangely, it was removed (presumably) by Twitter and hasn't returned. At the time of writing, all but one of the top ten trending terms is taken up with Jackson related terms, something that is likely to continue for a while. One minor flaw of the trending system was exposed with "P Michael" and "P Micheal" both appearing, these being truncated from "RIP Michael" and "RIP Micheal". The misspelling "Micheal Jackson" also made an appearance.
In what may have been its busiest single hour yet in terms of traffic and tweets, Twitter held up surprisingly well. The fail whale made the occasional appearance and things moved pretty slowly at times, but there was no major downtime. This is more than can be said for TMZ, whose service was intermittent - and the LA Times, whose servers collapsed shortly after confirming the death.
Perez Hilton, whose servers must have been straining under the weight of his most recent controversies prior to last night's news, apparently gave up shortly after the announcement. The official Michael Jackson site is also "not available".
The news also caused an editing war on Wikipedia as users fought over whether the controversial pop star was dead or not. Ebay ticket touts will be disappointed at what they thought would be an easy payday and will now be hoping that the promoters are good enough to offer refunds for the 750,000 tickets sold for Jackson's forthcoming O2 shows in London.
As in life, it would seem controversy will surround Jacko in death. Certain websites have already taken advantage of the fact that the dead can't sue by speculating on unsavoury causes of death, though the truth will undoubtedly be revealed soon.
Michael Jackson death causes Twitter to buckle under traffic
Last night, the news that the "King of Pop", Michael Jackson, had been rushed to hospital following a cardiac arrest broke out. Entertainment site TMZ broke the story at around 10.20pm GMT, but the death was not confirmed by other new sources until around half an hour later. The news spread like wildfire across the internet and the first website be majorly affected was, of course, Twitter - which again proved its value as a real time search engine.
Within minutes of the news breaking, the trending term "Michael Jackson" had knocked 'iranelection' from the top. Strangely, it was removed (presumably) by Twitter and hasn't returned. At the time of writing, all but one of the top ten trending terms is taken up with Jackson related terms, something that is likely to continue for a while. One minor flaw of the trending system was exposed with "P Michael" and "P Micheal" both appearing, these being truncated from "RIP Michael" and "RIP Micheal". The misspelling "Micheal Jackson" also made an appearance.
In what may have been its busiest single hour yet in terms of traffic and tweets, Twitter held up surprisingly well. The fail whale made the occasional appearance and things moved pretty slowly at times, but there was no major downtime. This is more than can be said for TMZ, whose service was intermittent - and the LA Times, whose servers collapsed shortly after confirming the death.
Perez Hilton, whose servers must have been straining under the weight of his most recent controversies prior to last night's news, apparently gave up shortly after the announcement. The official Michael Jackson site is also "not available".
The news also caused an editing war on Wikipedia as users fought over whether the controversial pop star was dead or not. Ebay ticket touts will be disappointed at what they thought would be an easy payday and will now be hoping that the promoters are good enough to offer refunds for the 750,000 tickets sold for Jackson's forthcoming O2 shows in London.
As in life, it would seem controversy will surround Jacko in death. Certain websites have already taken advantage of the fact that the dead can't sue by speculating on unsavoury causes of death, though the truth will undoubtedly be revealed soon.
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