Jackson Memorial Draws Record Web Traffic

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Jackson Memorial Draws Record Web Traffic

Posted at 07/08/2009 by HListed Staff 0 Comment

According to The Hollywood Reporter’s website, more people watched Michael Jackson’s memorial service on MSN.com than watched the inauguration of President Obama.

It proved to be the second-largest video streaming event for CNN.com.

Of particular interest is the breakdown of audience tracking during the service, below in italics.

MSN.com announced it received record-setting viewership during Michael Jackson’s memorial Tuesday.

According to a site spokesperson, MSN.com received its biggest traffic spike ever during the Jackson event, with 50% more people watching the memorial than watched Barack Obama’s inauguration.

The site — one of many news outlets providing a live stream of the Staples Center ceremony (live blog here) — delivered more than 3 million streams.

On CNN.com, however, the event was the second-largest live video streaming day in the site’s history. The network reported 81 million pageviews and 9.7 million live video streams between 12 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET — which included the entire memorial service. The news site’s all-time viewership record for a full day was nearly 27 million video streams on President Obama’s inauguration day. (Such numbers point out the trickiness of comparing the relative Web popularity of two different events — where you set the start-and-stop parameters can make all the difference.)

A spokesperson for Akamai, a company that handles Internet traffic for a large number of outlets, also said the Jackson memorial was the second-largest online traffic surge of all time.

And if measuring only across Akamai’s news sites, Jackson’s memorial ranking falls further. Akamai registered a peak rate of 3.9 million global Internet visitors per minute around noon, which failed to crack the service’s top 15 events in that particular measurement.

One traffic-watcher reported how Akamai’s tracking rose and fell during various memorial speakers, providing real-time ratings of a sort:

Celebrities from the entertainment world were clearly the draw during the Webcast: Akamai’s real-time video-stream count slumped slightly when the Rev. Al Sharpton took the stage (OK, he’s a fiery orator, but can he sing?), then rebounded when singer/songwriter/guitarist John Mayer took his place. The ups and downs could serve as an instant rating service for a particular star’s appeal. (Sharpton at -20 per second, Mayer at +40. Brooke Shields started out at +10 but fell to -20 as her tribute went on. Martin Luther King III came in at -80.)