Jackson’s death brings web to an emergency stop

Laptop users contribute to surge in web traffic as Michael Jackson pronounced dead

Michael Jackson’s death has had major repercussions for the web. As the news was confirmed at 3.15pm local time on 25 June 2009 in Los Angeles, a tidal wave of traffic temporarily shut down Twitter which received hundreds of thousands of Tweets about Jackson per second.

The likes of actress Demi Moore and David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, used the microblogging site to leave personal tributes to Jackson via their laptops.

Celebrity gossip site TMZ.com, which is credited with the scoop, also temporarily failed. Popular blog Perez Hilton was another to feel the pressure, buckling at the surge in traffic as fans used laptops and PCs to confirm the tragic news.

’Volcanic’ surge of interest in Jackson from laptops

Further stats demonstrate the significance that laptops and broadband have when news breaks. Analysts have revealed that, at its peak, 15 per cent of all Twitter posts mentioned Jackson. This tops online discussions concerning swine flu and the conflict in Iran which, as reported by the Times, never exceeded five percent.

Google also statistically tracked the news flash. It described a ‘volcanic’ surge of interest in Michael Jackson with most of the top 100 searches through PCs and laptops relating to the singer.

The Hudson Plane Crash in New York earlier this year was another event which captured global attention through laptops and Twitter, but the death of the 50-year-old music legend has tested the resilience of the web to the limit.

At this stage in the reportings, it is believed a pain killing injection of Demerol led to Jackson’s cardiac arrest and subsequent death.