The sudden death of pop star Michael Jackson not only stunned his fans, it also staggered the Internet. Major news sites were overwhelmed by so much traffic that many Web surfers couldn’t get through.
“We haven’t seen this kind of slowdown on our news index in quite some time,’’ said Dan Berkowitz, spokesman for
Berkowitz said that news sites operated by TV networks ABC and NBC, the Los Angeles Times newspaper, and Internet service provider AOL at times turned away 90 percent of Internet users trying to reach them. AOL spokeswoman LaToya Drake said that news of Jackson’s death broke just as her company’s popular AIM instant messaging network was undergoing a scheduled software update. As a result, the AIM network was completely shut down for about 40 minutes on Thursday.
As for the AOL site itself, company spokeswoman Dori Salcido said, “We’re still looking into the Keynote Systems report, but have no indication there have been issues.’’
Shawn White, Keynote’s director of external operations, said the social networking site Twitter also took a big hit. People use Twitter to send brief messages, called tweets, to friends and colleagues. White said that tweets are usually transmitted in about two seconds, but on Thursday, the delay was as long as 40 seconds. White estimated that for about an hour, half of those visiting Twitter were unable to send messages.
Still, Jackson’s death didn’t even make the top 15 Internet news events of all time, according to
Other news events have also attracted more Internet traffic than Jackson’s death. These include the January crash of a US Airways plane into the Hudson River, the 2007 death of Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith, and the 2006 plane crash that took the life of New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com. 