The Death of a Super Star in Web2.0

I talked with my elder friend about MJ's sudden death today. She described how popular he was in India at that time. For me, it seems he is not the iconic pop music star for my generation in China. Yet, I don't know who else could be the legendary supers star for my generation. When I started to know pop culture by television or Internet, he has been the"love of tabloids" rather than the "king of pop".

But, I am still completely shocked when I learned it from New York Times' News Alert. When I rushed to my Twitter page, his name has been all over the trending words. At the noon, Farah Fawcett was the headline for the news; later in the afternoon, MJ's name has occupied all the evening news. I am still more interested to see the reaction from the web.

CNN has an article, " Jackson dies, almost takes Internet with him", which describes the phenomenal outrages of several popular websites last night. The first sentence says "How many people does it take to break the Internet? On June 25, we found out it's just one -- if that one is Michael Jackson." Totally agree.

When I searched MJ on Wikipedia this morning, it says "Database Error". Maybe too many people were editing the page at the same time.

Also, I noticed Twitter's trending words disappeared last night. I am not sure if it is because system was too busy to respond. A picture by Raul Oorzco portrays what Twitter is experiencing by replacing Twitter's famous under maintenance whale by MJ.

Besides fans and Internet users' huge responses, websites also responded much quicker than televisions.

Time Warner's gossip website TMZ is reportedly the first media to release the news and has continued to offer exclusive updates. It also has experienced several outrages since last night, according to the CNN news. Meanwhile, YouTube has already highlighted MJ's channel on front page, and even Chinese video streaming website, Tudou.com, has featured MJ on the front page.

There's one backlash of Twitter, Blog and other web 2.0 applications that these platforms make it too easy to spread rumors without responsibility. Yet, this time, web 2.0 is the most convincing way to demonstrate the influence of an international legendary super star.

Michael Jackson (1958-2009) R.I.P.