One man almost breaks the internet - Michael Jackson

[Time]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/06/26/m...net/index.html

[MdmeX]

YEP - cause He's "BADDDDDDDDDDDD" and the whole damn world knows it

[Mosiah]

Apparently, some parts of the Internet are still broke!

[Historian]

It Is Indeed Amazing!!

The servers of popular sites like Twitter and TMZ actually crashed yesterday!

My Source: BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8120324.stm

Page last updated at 08:17 GMT, Friday, 26 June 2009 09:17 UK

Web slows after Jackson's death

By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley



The sheer number of queries concerned Google

The internet suffered a number of slowdowns as people the world over rushed to verify accounts of Michael Jackson's death. Search giant Google confirmed to the BBC that when the news first broke it feared it was under attack.

Millions of people who searched for the star's name on Google News were greeted with an error page.

It warned users "your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application".

"It's true that between approximately 2.40PM Pacific and 3.15PM Pacific, some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson and saw the error page," said Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker.

It was around this time that the singer was officially pronounced dead.
Google's trends page showed that searches for Michael Jackson had reached such a volume that in its so called "hotness" gauge the topic was rated "volcanic".

The BBC news website reported that traffic to the site at the time of Jackson's death was 72% higher than normal.

Fail
Google was not the only company overwhelmed by the public's clamour for information.

The microblogging service Twitter crashed with the sheer volume of people using the service.


Searches for topics related to Michael Jackson peaked at 3PM Pacific

Queries about the star soon rocketed to the top of its updates and searches. But the amount of traffic meant it suffered one of its well-known outages.
Before the company's servers crashed, TweetVolume noted that "Michael Jackson" appeared in more than 66,500 Twitter updates.

According to initial data from Trendrr, a Web service that tracks activity on social media sites, the number of Twitter posts Thursday afternoon containing "Michael Jackson" totaled more than 100,000 per hour.

That put news of Jackson's death at least on par with the Iran protests, as Twitter posts about Iran topped 100,000 per hour on June 16 and eventually climbed to 220,000 per hour.

Early reports of Mr Jackson's death and the confusion surrounding it caused a rash of changes and corrections to be made on his Wikipedia page as editors tried to keep up with events and the number of people trying to update the page.

TMZ, the popular celebrity gossip site that broke the story following a tip-off that a paramedic had visited the singers home also crashed.

There was a domino effect as users then fled to other sites. Hollywood gossip writer Perez Hilton's site was among those to flame out.

Keynote Systems reported that its monitoring showed performance problems for the web sites of AOL, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and Yahoo.

Beginning at 2.30PM Pacific "the average speed for downloading news sites doubled from less than four seconds to almost nine seconds," said Shawn White, Keynote's director of external operations.

He told Data Center Knowledge that "during the same period, the average availability of sites on the index dropped from almost 100% to 86%".

[Hortical]

Jackson music, videos quickly sell out after death

Jackson music, videos quickly sell out after death

• By RACHEL METZ, AP Technology Writer - Fri Jun 26, 2009 4:57PM EDT

NEW YORK - Michael Jackson's death has led to skyrocketing sales of his music and videos, with major retailers selling out of products that have regained immense popularity overnight.
Bill Carr, Amazon.com Inc.'s vice president for music and video, said Friday that once the world learned that the pop icon had died Thursday, the Web site sold out within minutes all CDs by Michael Jackson and by the Jackson 5 — the group Jackson and his four older brothers formed out of Gary, Ind., in the late '60s.
Jackson's albums accounted for all 10 of Amazon's "Bestsellers in Music" list Friday, with the 25th anniversary edition of the celebrated "Thriller" album taking the top spot.
Barnes and Noble Inc.'s Web site and retail stores also sold out most Jackson CDs, DVDs and books, and its 10 bestselling CDs were Jackson titles as well. Borders Group Inc.'s Web site sold out almost everything related to the star; albums also sold out at some of the book seller's retail locations, including its New York stores.
"We saw something similar when (Luciano) Pavarotti and (Frank) Sinatra passed, but from the initial read on this it seems to be a faster rush," Borders spokeswoman Mary Davis said. "People seem to be shocked by the news and want to go out and rediscover his music."
At a Borders in midtown Manhattan, Chris Barnes, 37, came in during his lunch break Friday and was disappointed he couldn't get a compilation of the star's number-one videos — something he had seen on the shelf just a few days earlier.
"He was an icon. I grew up on 'Off The Wall' and all that," Barnes said, listening to Jackson's "Rock With You" on his iPod as he spoke.
Apple Inc. would not describe the level of demand for Jackson's music at its online iTunes Store, but his dominance of iTunes' top-seller lists Friday speaks for itself.
Before word of Jackson's hospitalization, none of his albums were in iTunes' list of top sellers. After the news broke, "Thriller" quickly cracked the iTunes top 100; within hours, it reached No. 1. By Friday afternoon, nine of the top 10 albums were Jackson's. "The Essential Michael Jackson" song collection was the top-selling album, followed by "Thriller."
Five of Jackson's singles made it to iTunes' list of most-purchased tracks — "Man in the Mirror," "Thriller," "The Way You Make Me Feel," "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough," and "Smooth Criminal" — in what may be one of the best barometers to gauge his most popular songs.
Borders, Barnes and Noble and Amazon all were working on restocking their stores.
Sixty percent of Amazon's CD orders Thursday were for Michael Jackson music, something Carr called "stunning." He said he'd "never seen anything like this" before at Amazon after the death of a pop culture icon.
With Amazon sold out of Jackson CDs, Carr said many customers were buying Jackson's music in digital form. Sales of Jackson-related videos are also up on Amazon — Carr said most DVDs, including the 1978 movie musical "The Wiz," are currently out of stock.
Carr said it was difficult to say whether the increased sales would persist, saying Amazon for now was taking things "minute by minute" and reacting to customers' orders.
"They love him, he's a legend, and they're anxious to make sure they have his music in their collections," he said.
Demand for Jackson-related products also shot up abroad.
The Web site for Britain's largest music seller, HMV Group, saw an unprecedented amount of downloads of Jackson's music after his death.
At HMV stores, sales rose about 20-fold, though they had stocked up on albums in advance of concerts that were to begin next month, HMV spokesman Gennaro Castaldo said. Jackson, 50, had been prepping for a 50-show engagement at London's O2 Arena.
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