Major internet sites from search giant Google to online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, had a hard time facing an enormous load from people trying to confirm Michael Jackson’s death.
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Twitter, the microblogging site failed to cope with the pressure too and collapsed under the load of users sending broadband blog messages about Michael Jackson. The enormity of the situation was reflected by a report from the BBC which said that the number of times Jackson related Tweets appeared was more than 65,000. Trendrr, a web analyst firm, confirming the BBC’s report said that Michael Jackson Tweets averaged about 100,000 an hour before Twitter collapsed.
Major problems were faced by other networks such as AOL, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and Yahoo as well, reported Keynote systems. Shawn White, Keynote director of external operations, came forward with some hard evidence in terms of data. He illustrated it by showing that the normal download rates of news sites had increased from four seconds to nine seconds at the same time the availability of sites on the index had come down to 86 per cent from about 100 per cent earlier.
Google was not spared form over zealous Michael fans either. Its search engine succinctly termed the increase in Search Volume as ‘volcanic’ between 2.40pm and 3.15pm Pacific time. Google even feared a global cyber attack as it posted a message saying that the search item could be a computer virus to users who keyed in