From Yahoo! News:
It was a where-were-you moment in a digital age. Michael Jackson's death was not learned from a fatherly TV news anchor. Instead, the news first spread online…
The celebrity website TMZ.com broke the news of Jackson's death at 5:20 p.m.
It was a huge scoop for the AOL-owned TMZ, though many did not believe TMZ's report until it was matched by more established news organizations…
Jackson dominated the discussion on Twitter, generating the most tweets per second since Barack Obama was elected president in November.
"We saw over twice the normal tweets per second the moment the story broke as people shared their grief and memories," Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in an e-mail.
The tweeting tripped up Twitter briefly, but engineers quickly responded to keep the service running. At times, Jackson-related search topics were the most popular on the site.
Celebrity users on Twitter — including Lindsay Lohan, Ashton Kutcher, John Mayer, Ryan Seacrest and ?uestlove of the Roots — posted their remembrances…
So many people wanted to verify the early reports of Jackson's death that the computers running Google's news section interpreted the fusillade of "Michael Jackson" requests as an automated attack from about 5:40 p.m. through 6:15 p.m.
As a defense mechanism, Google's news section responded to requests for information about Michael Jackson with squiggly letters known as a "captcha." Just as online ticket buyers regularly do to complete their purchases, the Michael Jackson searchers had to enter the letters correctly to see Google's new results…
On YouTube, traffic flowed to music videos of Jackson, while thousands posted videos of themselves sharing their thoughts on Jackson.
Others were using Facebook to organize vigils and celebrations of Jackson. One in San Francisco with nearly 50 confirmed guests hoped to recreate the "Thriller" dance.
Within a few hours of the news of Jackson's death, his 1982 album "Thriller" was the No. 1 album on iTunes. Several of his discs were also in the top 10 of the digital store.
Showing posts with label Michael Jackson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Jackson. Show all posts
June 25, 2009
Michael Jackson: 1958-2009
From Wikipedia:
Michael Jackson's Thriller is a 13-minute music video for the song of the same name released on December 2, 1983 and directed by John Landis who also co-wrote the screenplay with Jackson. The mini-film music video was broadcast on MTV three weeks before Christmas 1983. It was the most expensive video of its time, costing $500,000, and Guinness World Records listed it in 2006 as the "most successful music video," selling over 9 million units.
During the video, Jackson transforms into both a zombie and a werecat (although makeup artist Rick Baker referred to it as a "cat monster" in the "Making of Thriller" documentary); familiar territory for Landis, who had directed An American Werewolf in London two years earlier. Co-starring with Jackson was former Playboy centerfold Ola Ray.
The video was choreographed by Michael Peters (who had worked with the singer on his prior hit "Beat It"), with Michael Jackson. The video also contains incidental music by film music composer Elmer Bernstein, who had previously also worked with Landis on An American Werewolf in London. The video (like the song) contains a spoken word performance by horror film veteran Vincent Price. Rick Baker assisted in prosthetics and makeup for the production.
Jackson, at the time one of Jehovah's Witnesses, added a disclaimer to the start of the video, saying: “Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult.”
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