Webupon

Michael Jackson died last week, and we all experienced an overwhelming expression of sympathy and mourning from loyal fans and people who grew up with his music.

Most people found in the web the medium to express themselves. But what was the effect on the internet by all this traffic? What was the result of all those people seeking information in Google or posting thoughts in blogs, downloading music or watching streaming video on YouTube?

The resulting traffic was something new in the history of the net. Only days like 9/11 could compare with the amount of traffic generated by Michael Jackson’s dearth. But let’s have a look at the numbers.

Google

Searching for Michael Jackson in Google is an interesting experiment.

On the announcement of Michael’s death, everybody turned to Google, which was overwhelmed by the traffic and reportedly started to bring up error messages in certain searches. Sources from Google said they “thought they were under attack”.

(Source: John C Abell, wired.com)

Numbers are changing by the hour, so the table I compiled here was valid on 29/06/2009 12:20 GMT

For those who do not know the specifics of Google searching, let me just say that the when you search for Michael Jackson Google will return all pages with Michael Jackson, and Michael and Jackson. If you use the quotes like in “Michael Jackson” then Google will return only pages that include the phrase “Michael Jackson”. If you use two or more words or phrases with the plus (+) sign first, you force all the signed words to be in the returned pages. These more specific searched decrease the number of results.

Twitter

Twitter had its twits per second double within minutes of the announcement. Three days later, 30% of all twits were about Michael Jackson.

(Source: Venturebeat)

Looking at the Jackson-twitter statistics, it is a surprise to see that 3 out of 4 people were under the age of 35 (who were either in primary school or not even born in the 80s), only 13.3% were between 36 and 50 (the people who lived the eighties) and only 6.2% are people who are older than Michael.

Facebook

Facebook groups started popping up seconds after Michael’s death was announced. Titles like “R.I.P. Michael” and “we love you Michael” were amongst the most commons (Facebook search only shows up to 500 listings). Google found today (29/06/2009 11:46 GMT) at least 37,000,000 entries of “Michael Jackson” and “Facebook”. Thousands of people opened Michael Jackson groups and thousands made personal profiles with the name Michael Jackson.

Domain names

In the first 24 hours, there were 3,459 Michael Jackson “.COM” domains registered (according to Simon Johnson who made the first compilation of this list). The .COM is one of the about 20 generic TLDs (Top Level Domains). However there are many country specific domains, like the “.co.uk” for Britain, “.it” for Italy or “.gr” for Greece. To be more accurate there are 252 country specific domains. A rough estimate is that there are more than 100,000 new domain names related to Michael Jackson in one way or the other.

Some of the most interesting names are:

• michaelisstillalive.com.
• michaeljackson-conspiracy.com.
• michaeljackson911tape.com.
• michaeljacksonautopsy.com.
• michaeljacksonconcertrefund.com.
• michaeljacksonisfaking.com.
• michaeljacksontributetour.com.
• michaeljacksonwasmurdered.com.
• whopoisonedmichaeljackson.com

Some domain names with the name of Michael in them are sold as much as $1,500,000 on EBay.

There are of course thousands of Cyber Squatters out there, who try to make a living like birds of pray, waiting for someone to die to make use of his name, or by registering domain names of well established brands, tv shows, celebrities etc.

But what is even more disturbing is that some people were anticipating Michael Jackson’s death, years in advance to make a living out of it. The domain name www.MichaelJacksonDead.Com was registered on 6 May 2007, as anyone can see in a public WHOIS search. The person(s) who registered the domain name did not even try to conceal that information (which they could).

Domain Name: MICHAELJACKSONDEAD.COM

Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.

Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com

Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com

Name Server: NS37.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

Name Server: NS38.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

Status: clientDeleteProhibited

Status: clientRenewProhibited

Status: clientTransferProhibited

Status: clientUpdateProhibited

Updated Date: 17-jun-2009

Creation Date: 06-may-2007

Expiration Date: 06-may-2010

Malware and Computer Viruses

Believe it or not, an inevitable effect was the massive increase of malware vendors and spam senders, related to Michael Jackson. Most were spam or phishing scams that were taking advantage of the fan’s feelings and curiosity.

According to Computerworld, “Just eight hours after news broke about Jackson, U.K.-based Sophos started tracking the first wave of Jackson spam, which used a subject head of “Confidential — Michael Jackson.” The spam wasn’t pitching a product or leading users to a phishing or malware Web site, but instead was trying to dupe users into replying to the message in order to collect e-mail addresses and verify them as legitimate.”

Online Music

Online music, streaming audio and video, downloads of MP3s, you name it. The death of Michael Jackson triggered a chain reaction of web-events.

The music site last.fm issued the following chart that shows how Michael’s tracks went off the charts by the minute.

(Source: Last.Fm)

More than 450,000 videos in YouTube are labelled “Michael Jackson” and the site saw its traffic increased dramatically the last few days.

Conclusion

Michael Jackson was a great performer and singer. There is no doubt about that. But was so surprising was the snowball effect in the infrastructure of the major websites. The day Google and Twitter went over capacity, will not be forgotten soon. Website traffic and bandwidths operate with statistical estimations of what kind of traffic they are to expect. Sometimes something happened that was not expected and all contingency plans seem to be out of date. This reminds a lot of the Christmas Eves some years ago when everybody was texting everybody, and the SMS were taking 2-3 days to get to their destination.

The initial shock is over, and search engines and news sites have learned their lessons.

The ones who need to learn their lesson are the internet users. Beware: there will be a lot of fraud, a lot of spam and a lot of deceit surrounding Michael Jackson’s death. Do not buy anything online these days, unless it is from trusted vendors. Do not get fooled by offers. Nobody is actually selling cheap less than a week after Michael’s death. Wait, and you will find real bargains in the future. Never mind how devoted a fan you are, you must learn to spot the scams, and help fight online fraud.