<![CDATA[Gawker: valleywag, michael jackson]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/gawker.com.png <![CDATA[Gawker: valleywag, michael jackson]]> http://gawker.com/tag/valleywag/michaeljackson http://gawker.com/tag/valleywag/michaeljackson <![CDATA[Internet Somehow Survives Michael Jackson Funeral]]> Sure, the Department of Defense designed it to be military-grade rugged, but no one really knew if the internet could handle a memorial service webcast of a pop megastar. Oh, it was brutal. From a network engineering perspective.

Michael Jackson's service drew, at its peak, about 2.8 million video and audio streams through the network of content middleman Akamai, versus around 350,000 on a normal day. It was almost entirely Americans watching; apparently the rest of the world was more interested in nuclear disarmament or mass ethnic uprising or whatever.

Back in the U.S., Facebook reported it was handling 6,000 status updates per minute, fueled by more than 300,000 viewers on a joint CNN/Facebook video console. Jackson chatter dominated and slowed Twitter.

In unrelated news, underemployment just pushed the average U.S. workweek to a record low of 33 hours while the jobless rate reached 9.5 percent.

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5309513&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Michael Jackson Is Finally King of Facebook]]> The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.As it has for so many other celebrities, death has bolstered Michael Jackson's image. The late pop singer just surpassed Barack Obama to hold the most popular page on Facebook. The numbers are pretty staggering:

Since Jackson's death, his Facebook page has grown from 80,000 Facebook fans to more than 6.4 million, according to the blog All Facebook. At times, the rate surpassed 20 new fans per second.

On the one hand, people are memorializing a beloved icon. On the other, there's never been a safer time to let your children connect with Michael Jackson online. (Too soon?)

(Pic: Fans sign a Michael Jackson poster outside Staples Center, July 7. Via Getty Images.)

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5308736&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Michael Jackson Traffic Melts Entire Internet]]> The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Any doubts about Michael Jackson's megastardom should have ended after news of the singer's death tripped up Google and crashed AOL Instant Messenger, Wikipedia, TMZ and, of course, Twitter. A survey of the epic traffic:

  • Leading news websites saw traffic surge to 4.2 million visitors per minute from around 2.75 million visitors per minute, according to Akamai.
  • CNN's traffic grew fivefold in one hour and the site clocked 20 million pageviews.
  • Twitter had its biggest spike in traffic, to 5,000 tweets per second, since Barack Obama's election as president, according to co-founder Biz Stone.
  • Facebook status updates tripled.
  • AOL Instant Messenger went down for 40 minutes.
  • TMZ, which broke the news of Jackson's death, crashed several times amid a surge of traffic.
  • The LA Times, which got early confirmation of the death, went down, as well.
  • For about half an hour, Michael Jackson queries weren't working on Google News.
  • Wikipedia froze amid an edit war on Jackson's page.
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5302943&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Twitter Doesn't Care About Iran Anymore]]> The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Well it's taken almost two weeks, but it looks as though The Week America Died is about to knock "#iranelection" out of the top ten Twitter trending topics.

I just caught this screengrab off of my Twitter homepage at 9:16PM eastern time. What could possibly knock it off? Another celebrity death? Or another fake death perhaps, like the Jeff Goldblum dead in New Zealand rumor? Anyone down for starting a Steve Guttenberg death rumor with me?

UPDATE: Oh snap! Our own Richard Blakeley just snapped this screengrab on his Twitter homepage, and it loooks as though, if only for a moment, #iranelection has been knocked out of the top ten.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5302746&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Who's going to TechTalk Menorca, the Balearic boondoggle?]]> Martin Varsavsky, the founder of Wi-Fi startup Fon, has concocted another excuse for Web 2.0's jet set to rack up frequent-flier miles and buy carbon offsets: It's called Menorca TechTalk, held on Varsavsky's ranch on the Mediterranean island this weekend. The website is password-protected, but Valleywag got a list of who's going. It's a curious mix of professional conference attendees, like Rapleaf's Auren Hoffman, Loïc Le Meur of Seesmic, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, and David Sifry of Technorati, mixed in with a few people who have day jobs. There are even Googlers on the list — and when have you known those lot to leave the protective bubble of Mountain View? Oddly, Jimmy Wales did not seem to make the cut, though his New York patroness, Louise Blouin MacBain, is listed. In the comments, sort the TechTalkers into your preferred categories.

  • Alan Levy (BlogTalkRadio)
  • Alec Oxenford (OLX, DineroMail)
  • Alejandro Estrada (DineroMail)
  • Alexis Bonte (Erepublik.com)
  • Andrew McLaughlin (Google)
  • Anil de Mello (Mobuzz)
  • Arturo J. Paniagua (Hipertextual)
  • Auren Hoffman (Rapleaf)
  • Axel Schmiegelow (Sevenload, Denkwerk Group)
  • Benjamí Villoslada (Menèame)
  • Brent Hoberman (Mydeco)
  • Carlos Martìn (IG Expansiòn)
  • Cedric Maloux
  • Christophe F. Maire (Nokia gate5, investor)
  • Claudia Gisiger-Gonzalez (UNHCR)
  • Dan Dubno (Blowing Things Up)
  • David Sifry (Technorati)
  • Demian M. Bellumio (Cyloop)
  • Eduardo Arcos (Hipertextual)
  • Efe Cakarel (The Auteurs)
  • Ehssan Dariani (studiVZ)
  • Esteban Sosnik
  • Esther Dyson (EDventure)
  • Felix Petersen (Plazes)
  • Hans Peter Brøndmo (Plum)
  • Ibrahim Evsan (Sevenload)
  • Ivan Communod (Vpod.tv)
  • Jacob Hsu (Symbio)
  • James Gutierrez (Progress Financial)
  • Jennifer L. Schenker (BusinessWeek)
  • John Markoff (The New York Times)
  • Joichi Ito (Creative Commons, Six Apart Japan, investor)
  • Jon Berrojalbiz (Trading Motion)
  • Jonas Birgersson (Labs2)
  • Jörg Rohleder (Vanity Fair)
  • José María Figueres (Grupo Felipe IV)
  • Jose Marin (IG Expansion)
  • Julio Alonso (Weblogs SL)
  • Lars Hinrichs (XING)
  • Loïc Le Meur (Seesmic)
  • Louise T Blouin MacBain (Louise Blouin Media)
  • Lukasz Gadowski (Spreadshirt.com, investor)
  • Lukasz Wejchert (Onet.pl)
  • Marc Samwer (European Founders Fund)
  • Marcelo Claure (Brightstar Corp.)
  • Marko Ahtisaari (Blyk, Dopplr, FON)
  • Mathias Entenmann (Betfair)
  • Matt Biddulph (Dopplr)
  • Megan Smith (Google)
  • Michael Arrington (Techcrunch)
  • Michael Jackson (Mangrove Capital Partners)
  • Michael Wolf (Farallon Point)
  • Nikesh Arora (Google)
  • Ola Ahlvarsson (Result, FON)
  • Om Malik (Giga Omni Media)
  • R.J. Friedlander (Grupo Planeta)
  • Ricardo Galli (Menéame)
  • Rodrigo Sepúlveda Schulz (Vpod.tv)
  • Rupert Schäfer (DLD, Hubert Burda Media)
  • Scott Rafer (Lookery, Mashery, Winksite)
  • Tariq Krim (Netvibes)
  • Thomas Crampton (Next Media)
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=389017&view=rss&microfeed=true