Twitter, Web On Overload Following Michael Jackson's Death
June 26 2009 - 12:26PM
Dow Jones News
Michael Jackson's sudden death Thursday rocked Twitter and news
Web sites as people swarmed the Internet looking for the latest
developments and analysis surrounding the death of the pop-music
icon.
Twitter, the popular microblogging service that's experienced
exponential growth in the last year, was flooded with thousands of
Jackson-related messages immediately after reports of his death
circulated. Demand was so overwhelming that performance slowed
considerably, and Twitter said it had to disable temporarily the
search field on its users' home pages.
"We saw an instant doubling of tweets per second the moment the
story broke," Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told the New York Times.
He added that the volume of Jackson-related messages hit 5,000 per
minute at its peak.
"This particular news about the passing of such a global icon is
the biggest jump in tweets per second since the U.S. presidential
election," Stone told the paper.
Stone wasn't immediately available for further comment.
To be sure, Twitter wasn't the only site that was on overload
Thursday as Web sites for Time Warner Inc.'s (TWX) AOL, Walt Disney
Co.'s (DIS) ABC, CBS Corp. (CBS) and the Los Angeles Times all
experienced "marked slowdowns in performance," according to
research from Keynote Systems Inc. (KEYN), which measures Internet
performance.
Beginning at 5:30 p.m. EDT, "the average speed for downloading
news sites doubled from less than four seconds to almost nine
seconds," said Shawn White, Keynote's director of external
operations. The average availability of sites dropped from almost
100% to 86% before returning to normal by 9:15 p.m.
Google Inc. (GOOG) also experienced difficulties as searches for
Michael Jackson immediately after the news broke resulted in error
messages rather than a list of results.
But delayed results and overloaded servers represent special
cause for concern for Twitter as developing search is seen as a way
to generate revenue.
Twitter's been praised for its rising popularity but also
criticized for its inability to develop a business model. Google
and Microsoft (MSFT) have been rumored to be interested in striking
partnerships with Twitter as its real-time search capabilities
could help advertisers better target consumers.
But current troubles "don't bode well for Twitter's prospects as
a real-time search engine, which many believe is likely the
service's most valuable feature," Joseph Tartakoff wrote in a post
on the technology blog paidContent.
-By Steven Russolillo, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2180;
steven.russolillo@dowjones.com