Jun 27, 2009 9:20 am US/Eastern
Jackson's Death Nearly Took Down Social Networks
(CBS4)
As soon as word got out that Michael Jackson was hospitalized, the news spread like wildfire on social networking sites. Many people learned of his death, not from television, but from their Twitter or Facebook account. Those sites came close to crashing from the spike of activity.
If you have ever wondered just how many people it would take to take down the internet, we learned Thursday it takes just one: Michael Jackson. AOL, "has never seen anything like [this]," calling Thursday a "seminal moment in internet history." Why? People turned to their computers, instead of their phone, to mourn the loss of the star. That surge slowed the internet and caused numerous sites to crash.
Twitter slowed to a snails pace at the Jackson "tweet" peak. At that time, more than 5,000 Michael Jackson related messages were being posted per minute. Some of those tweets came from celebrities, like Sean P. Diddy Combs. He wrote, "Michael Jackson showed me that you can actually see the beat. He made the music come to life...he made me believe in magic. I will miss him."
Fellow singer John Mayer tweeted that he was "dazed in the studio. A major strand of our cultural dna has left us. Rip MJ. I think we'll mourn his loss, as well as the loss of ourselves as children listening to thriller on the record player."
Other stars took the more traditional route, making statements to the press. Sandra Bernhardt said, "He was immensely talented and I think he was caught up in the craziness of the times and it's terribly sad."
Barry Gordy, founder of Motown records, who knew Jackson since he was a boy, is still in shock. "It's like a dream, a bad dream. He was so much like a son to me. It's just hard to believe that Michael Jackson is not here."
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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