CNN.com has an article up about how the death of Michael Jackson created a ridiculous amount of web traffic yesterday afternoon. Of course, in typical, sensationalizing, MSM-not-understanding-the-new medium fashion, they title it "Jackson dies, almost takes Internet with him," and begin the article with:
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.
They then go on to talk about the respective websites that were rushed with traffic.
Here's my beef: it didn't "almost" take out the Internet, okay? It caused some sites to become backed up and crash, but the Internet didn't "break." And let's review the importance of the sites they mention:
+ Google News slowed down, but didn't crash, and it only slowed down for those trying to find information about Michael Jackson. Google News is important, but I wouldn't say any more important than any of the vast menagerie of services operated by Google.
+ TMZ.com, an entertainment news (tabloid rag) site had outages. Whoop-di-doo. Not breaking the Internet.
+ Perez Hilton's blog. See TMZ.
+ Twitter crashed. Now this one I can see being an issue, but only for the people of Iran who are using it as a way to organize and combat the oppression of their illegitimate government. For almost all other tweeters posting "RIP Michael Jackson," not really a big deal. So Twitter is ahead of the curve on this one, but the Internet isn't broken yet.
+ Wikipedia was "temporarily overloaded." I can see being an issue for all those summer school students trying to write research papers. But the Internet is big, and Wikipedia isn't the only source of information out there. No Internet fail here.
+LA Times.com broke the story of Jackson's death, and suffered outages. But much like Wikipedia, it's not the only source of news here. No dice again.
+ AOL Instant Messenger was hit, but do people only communicate over AIM? No. Use your phones people. Again, I'm not buying it.
+ CNN.com saw it's Internet traffic increase five-fold. I don't know if this says more about the importance of Michael Jackson or the poor-traffic CNN gets on a regular basis.
There were also so MJ fan sites that were overwhelmed with traffic for music and video clips, but the story says nothing about YouTube or iTunes suffering from backup.
So maybe, MAYBE a couple of the sites mentioned are kind-of important to the everyday business of the World Wide Web. But the Internet didn't break, CNN. The Internet is a huge expanse of information and digital pathways. Some big sites were swamped with people looking for information on those pathways, but when the Mass Pike or 93 are backed up, we don't say they're "broken." Sites get backed up or crash everyday, but it's because the sites aren't made to deal with high volumes of traffic and not because "the Internet has failed us" as CNN announces in its story. Journalistic sensationalizing of a minor story at its worst.
(Hat Tip Angela Latona)
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