Earlier this morning I tweeted an article that I thought, at the time, might have been overstating things a bit:
No doubt the memorial service was expected to be big, but the biggest event in the history of the internet? I was a bit skeptical. But the article rightly pointed out that:
Since Jackson’s death almost two weeks ago, fans have been inundating social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace with comments, tributes and downloads, while searches for Jackson-related news have reached record levels on Google and Yahoo.
The ‘morning after’ he featured prominently on my Spotify playlist. And scrolling back over my Twitter activity the last couple weeks, I’ve made my fair share of #MJ related Tweets (here, here and here for example).
I can’t really comment on the ‘biggest event in history’ but on reflection, I think the Times might have had a point to an extent. The last couple weeks have been pretty significant and a number of services have been showing signs of Michael Jackson-related strain. So I’ve decided to go back and compile many Michael Jackson online stats as I could, to get a sense of the enormity of what’s been happening. There’s certainly been no shortage of them:
- About 1.6 million people applied to win 8,750 pairs of free tickets for the public memorial allocated via an online lottery over the weekend
- Jackson is now the most popular page on Facebook, with the number of members now standing at 6,708,180, up from 80,00 before his death
- 30 per cent of Twitter was taken up with Jackson-related discussion on 25 June
- Almost 50 million have watched Thriller on YouTube
- On Facebook during the memorial service there were 500,000 status updates posted, 300,000 users logged in using FB Connect and CNN, and 6,000 status updates per minute (2x average during Obama’s inauguration)
- Over 800,000 people have given the free Michael Jackson glove virtual gift on Facebook, making it the most popular gift ever
- Nielsen SoundScan reported 2.6 million Michael Jackson and Jackson 5 digital downloads in the week after his death, copared to 48,000 the week before. Apparently no artist has ever sold more than one million digital songs in one week.
- 5 of the top 10 selling singles on iTunes for the week ending July 6, 2009 were by Michael Jackson (#2 Man In the Mirror, #6 Billie Jean, #7 Thriller, #8 The Way You Make Me Feel and #10 Beat It)
- 4 of the top 10 selling albums on iTunes for the week ending July 6, 2009 were by Michael Jackson (#1 The Essential Michael Jackson, #3 Number Ones, #6 Thriller and #9 Off the Wall)
- TMZ’s traffic rose 70 per cent year on year, attracting 7.95 million visitors in the week that ended June 28, three days after Jackson’s death
- On the day after his death in the US, 70 out of 100 Google search terms were on Jackson while its trends page rated the topic “volcanic”
- Google also confirmed that the surge of Michael Jackson-related searches on Google News the night of his death was first interpreted as an attack on its service (see graph)
(Credit: Google)
Source: http://twist.flaptor.com
I could go on but you get the picture – it’s been a pretty mad couple of weeks! I think the figures above show not just a morbid fascination with Michael’s death, but also a celebration of his life to an extent.
Something tells me that Michael’s story online won’t end anytime soon.
Do comment or let me know if I’ve missed any significant stats/figures/etc.
Seems news of Dave Carroll’s YouTube hit has finally floated across the Atlantic and this morning a number of UK news outlets have been picking it up:
