News Sites Stay Up During Jackson Memorial

(CNET)  This story was written by CNET's Josh Lowensohn.

Weeks ago, the news of Michael Jackson's passing brought major news sites to their knees, so Tuesday's memorial service for the singer was expected to bring similar results.

This time it appears sites were better prepared for the traffic onslaught.

According to Gomez Incorporated, a company that monitors Web usage quality, there were both slowdowns and outages including one that dramatically slowed Twitter's performance. The company analyzed performance on seven news sites from multiple locations during Tuesday's event, with some of the biggest slowdowns coming to streaming video. Asia experienced a 40 percent drop in what the company calls "stalling issues," with the U.S. experiencing a drop of around five percent.

One of those news outlets that was serving up live streaming video was CNN, which according to internal data, topped out at 781,000 concurrent streams of the event. Between midnight EST and 4 PM the site also pulled in 11 million unique users who turned 72 million pages.

Ustream, which provided live streaming in a partnership with CBS, says the event was the "largest ever" that had been hosted on the service, in part because it was a worldwide broadcast. The service had 4.6 million streams of the memorial going, made up from 1.6 million unique users. It also had more than 12,000 messages posted to its built-in user chat rooms.

Besides slowdowns in streaming video, news sites also had lower availability, which means some users were unable to access them. Gomez recorded that number as low as 98.2 percent, whereas the sites usually maintain uptime in excess of 99.65 percent. Response times also took a hit. News sites experienced double, and nearly triple the load time to serve up pages. In the case of Twitter, many users were unable to view or post messages to the service. At what was seemingly the peak of Twitter's load, Gomez benchmarked it as taking around 62 seconds for the site's homepage to load, then allow users to log-in--a process which is normally just a few seconds.

Update: See also Larry Dignan's analysis over at ZDNet. He points to data host Akamai's visualization tool, which shows real-time activity on its sites which represent around 20 percent of the Web's traffic. There's a noticeable bump around the time of the memorial service begins.

By Josh Lowensohn

[ajjaxtheleast]

And just when you were beginning to think that you were
the only person in the whole world who didn't
have a life of his own to live,,,

Thanks, Michael

[wogerwabbit]

Good Lord! Is the guy in the ground yet? Can we get over this nonsense and back to reality?

[wmsfamily5]

While watching my favorite news team Monday night it was announced that channel 13 would start uninterrupted coverage of Michael Jackson?s memorial. I immediately set up a manual taping setting on my DVR to begin at 9:59am and run until 3pm. Still being on pain meds from a recent surgery I did not wake up until a little after 10am. I immediately turned on the television to channel 13. Usually I defend Katie Couric to my husband that doesn?t care for her interviewing style but today I was very disappointed in both her and the CBS station as a whole. Too many times were words missed of the speaker because they (station producers) were too caught up in their outdoor interview rather then just letting us sit in our chairs, lay in our beds or sit at our desks and just be apart of the ambience of the memorial. No talking, no music nothing but what was taking place on the stage inside Staples Center. If she wasn?t talking someone some where had turned on the outdoor microphones because all you would hear was static or air blowing through the mics. I changed at one point to a different channel to see if it was bad reception from the center but there was no static on this channel. I hit the record button for this one so that if I couldn?t hear it from the primary recording I had originally set up I could always watch and listen to the other one. Little did I know that it was only going to tape for the amount of time of the original program slot not until the special event was over so I only got 30 minutes on the more clear coverage. I finally got so disappointed with CBS coverage when I missed what Stevie Wonder had to say before he began singing, that I changed to channel 10 and watched from their camera point. I actually bounced from channel 10 to channel 3. My family is now in the livingroom trying to ?enjoy? the memorial service but because the majority of the recording is from the coverage on CBS it really isn?t that enjoyable. I just thought I would send a disappointing comment because I always remark how channel 13 covers the best and offers the best but this time they really let me down. I am really disappointed in the recording that I have of the event. To keep pulling away from the ceremony to talk to people outside was disrespectful towards, Michael Jackson, his family and to us fans that could not be there but wanted to experience it from our location. At least you didn?t throw in commercials.
Connie
Rancho Cordova, California

[Shuby1]

It's sad that Michael Jackson died but, there are many more important things going on in the world. What happened in Iran? What is happening with the Presidents visit to Russia? What is going on with the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq? What about the economy? There are many much more important things going on in the world. I am in the Army National Guard and am set to deploy in about a year. These things are much more important to the world and our nation than a pop icon. I wonder about our media's prioritys these days.

[wmsfamily5]

"Shuby1" I would like to give you best wishes and know you will be included in my prayers along with the thousands of other military there and other lands protecting me and my family and I THANK YOU VERY MUCH for doing so!!! However, it is nice to get away from the reality of the death and see something positive. Not that Michael's death was positive but the things he did that the media never bothered to cover, the hospital visits, the phone calls to sick people he couldn't be with just to cheer them, stories that would not have been told. I was glad the stations covered it and allowed me and the many others that wanted to share in that event the opportunity to do so. Just like with me when I get overwhelmed with the lack of support for our troups and the coverage of death over "there" instead of showing loving photos that I get on my emails of the games with children in the streets etc if someone was watching the memorial and got tired of it they could turn the channel. You can bet your dinner tonight that tomorrow they will all be back to showing us what terrible things are going on everywhere else. This only took the spot light of the military for a few hours. Unfortunately there will be months to come to get caught up with what was taken away today. My prayers are with the Jackson families as well as our Military families both here in the USA and out where ever they may be tonight!