King of Pop

It is safe to say that Michael Jackson’s Facebook fan pages grew tremendously immediately following his death on June 25, 2009. As status’ began to appear with the news of the death, fans started to show their support by creating and joining Michael Jackson fan groups.

One group, entitled “In Memory of Michael Jackson”, with over 20,000 members, shows to have a tremendous amount of activity daily, with video postings, comments, etc. They have also established a foundation where a user can purchase a “white glove watch” which will benefit children in need.

Upon further research, I found that MJ’s death had such a great impact on certain internet sites, that they actually had to be shut down. People who heard news of the rumored death and went to their computer to search it on Google created so much traffic that Google had to shut that search down, and send an error message back to users. Twitter became so infiltrated with new “Tweets” after the death that it, too, had to be shut down temporarily, as the network was overloaded. Wikipedia crashed as it reported over a million searches for MJ’s biography in one hour, as did AOL Instant Messenger, for a short period.

This tells us that first place people will look to confirm news is no longer the radio, newspaper, or television – it is the internet. Most people have internet accessibility at all times, whether it is in their house or on their phone, and it is both the easiest and quickest way to receive information. While I heard about the death of Michael Jackson while watching television, I can not deny that my next move was to turn to my computer and research when, how and why it happened, along with phone calls to the mainland...seems like they're just a little ahead in getting the latest news.

http://www.facebook.com/In.Memory.of.MJ?ref=ts