Michael Jackson's Memorial: How Will the Web Hold Up?

July 7, 2009— -- With thousands of fans gathering today at Los Angeles' Staples Center for Michael Jackson's memorial service, millions more are expected to take to the Internet, in what some analysts are expecting to be "the biggest online event ever."

As news of Jackson's death spread nearly two weeks ago, fans around the world converged on the Web in such droves that the Internet nearly buckled under the strain of all the interest.

Major news, search and social networking sites experienced so much traffic that performance decreased significantly. Some services, such as Twitter and AOL's Instant Messenger (AIM), temporarily shut down.

Given the intense level of online activity on the day of Jackson's death last week, Ben Parr, an associate editor at the social media blog Mashable, believes today's memorial could be the biggest Web event in history, surpassing even the unprecedented Internet activity the day of President Obama's inauguration.

"I personally believe [today's] memorial will top the response for Obama's inauguration," he told ABCNews.com. "Records will be set."

Not only was Jackson more of a global icon than Obama, that the event is a memorial service may draw a bigger audience, Parr said.

In the hours following Jackson's death, about 30 percent of tweets on Twitter were about the tragedy. And in the week that followed, there were 9.98 million queries for the terms "Michael" and "Jackson" across the top 25 search engines and news and social media sites, according to Web analytics firm Compete.

"Not even Obama had that impact on the Web," Parr said.