Death of Michael Jackson Spikes News Traffic, Music Sales

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on June 26, 2009 - 8:07am.

San Mateo, Calif. - As news spread about Michael Jackson's death on Thursday, fans and curiosity seekers inundated the Internet for information, slowing several major news sites to a crawl, according to website performance measurement firm Keynote Systems. The firm said that during the early evening hours, sites including ABC, CBS, the L.A. Times and AOL became nearly unavailable (down to nearly 10% availability).

"Beginning at 5:30pm (EDT), 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. "The index returned to normal by 9:15pm (EDT)."

Silicon Alley Insider reports that TMZ.com, which broke the news that Jackson was headed to the hospital, saw record traffic, besting by 200% the numbers it saw last year when it published a photo of singer Rihanna's injuries.

Billboard reports that Jackson's albums today hold seven of the top ten spots on the U.S. iTunes Store download charts, as well as eight of the top ten video download spots, while Jackson holds the top 15 spots on Amazon's chart.

Additionally, half of the top ten current "trending topics" on Twitter are Jackson-related.

CNET also reported that Wikipedia locked down several Jackson-related articles yesterday as users rushed to update them to reflect breaking news.

Related Links:
http://www.keynote.com

http://snipurl.com/kxv3h (Silicon Alley Insider)

http://snipurl.com/kxuy9 (Billboard)

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10273277-93.html