How News of Michael Jackson's Death Traveled Across the Web

19:21 - One of Michael Jackson’s ranch employee’s calls 911

The next forty-nine minutes are best described as the calm before the storm. The Los Angles Fire Department arrived at Neverland Ranch and family members were alerted of the news.

20:10 - (Story Breaks) A small entertainment site called x17online.com breaks the story.

They post photos and a brief story a full 20 minutes before the much larger entertainment site TMZ.com posts the news. Information goes live on the internet. BOOM!

20:30 - TMZ.com posts “Michael Jackson — Cardiac Arrest”

TMZ.com posts the story on its homepage and the story is distributed to hundreds of thousands of people via RSS. My guess is they paid a pretty penny for the image above and it paid for itself ten fold with all of the links TMZ got from the story.

21:12 - Wikipedia reports Jackson’s Cardiac Arrest

A member of Wikipedia adds the news of the Cardiac Arrest to Jackson’s Wikipedia article. This is well before any other news or social media source.

21:20 - TMZ.com posts story of death

Report of Jackson’s death starts to show up on RSS feeds and eventually Twitter. It is 11 minutes before the first person clicks on a bit.ly link to TMZ.

21:30 - CNNbrk tweets that Jackson goes to hospital

The official CNN account tweets to it’s 2 million followers that Jackson went to hospital after suffering from a cardiac arrest

21:31 - First bit.ly link to TMZ story

The first bit.ly link about the story is clicked by someone which leads them to the TMZ article.

21:45 - Wikipedia freezes Michael Jackson page

After an explosion of edits to Jackson’s Wikipedia article, editors take the step of locking it down in protective status.

21:48 - Wikipedia first reports Jackson’s death

Wikipedia Editor’s get enough evidence to post Jackson’s death.

21:50 - bit.ly link reaches high of 2,500 clicks a minute

Bit.ly link to TMZ hits high of almost 42 clicks a second.

22:03 - TMZ story on Jackson’s death is submitted to Digg

A bit late to the game, the story that would eventually go on to be one of the most dugg stories ever is first submitted to the site.

22:11 - TMZ story goes popular on Digg

The story is moved to the front page of Digg where its distribution erupts.

22:19 - “RIP Michael Jackson” tops Trends on Twitter

Story takes the next step and appears on Twitter’s Trends. Ten’s of millions of Twitter users now can see the story.

22:20 - MSNBC.com Confirms Jackson’s Death

One hour after the news of Jackson’s death hits the internet, the first mainstream news source publishes a confirmation article.

22:25 - CNN.com Confirms Jackson’s Death

CNN, out maneuvered by TMZ and MSNBC, confirms Jackson’s death.

22:34 - Approximately 2000 mentions a minute of Michael Jackson on Twitter

Mentions of Michael Jackson hit an all time high on Twitter with nearly 1,500 a minute. That’s almost 20% of all tweets at that time!

22:38 - Twitter starts to overload. First signs of the fail whale

Twitter starts to falter as a result of the massive spike.

22:40 - First stories of Jackson’s death make it on Google News

1 hour and 20 minutes after the story is first posted on TMZ, Google News starts to report the story.

22:46 - Google News Results of Jackson’s death start showing up on the results page for the query “Michael Jackson”

Google News results top the Google results page for “Michael Jackson”.

22:58 - Googlebot crawls CNN twitter feed

Google starts returning CNN’s twitter feed in “Michael Jackson” SERP and provides link to cached version.

23:00 - “Michael Jackson Died” shows up in Google Trends

Google trends updates and show’s “Michael Jackson Died” as hottest trending item.

23:18 - 4chan.org goes down

4chan members temporarily overload servers. I mention this mostly because I find it really funny. ;-p

23:47 - “Michael Jackson Heart Attack” and “Michael Jackson Cardiac Arrest” show up as suggested search on Google Homepage for “Michael Jackson”

Indirect news of Jackson’s death (if someone types “Michael Jackson”) shows up on Google’s homepage.