Mobile traffic surges during Michael Jackson memorial

Online and mobile traffic surged during Tuesday's lavish memorial tribute to pop star Michael Jackson, who died last month at the age of 50. Verizon Wireless reports that between 10 a.m. and noon PST, text message and mobile web use in the vicinity of Los Angeles' Staples Center (where the Jackson memorial was held) increased 86 percent over the same time period on Monday. Voice calls also increased 10 percent. Verizon Wireless previously reported it increased its capacity around the Staples Center in anticipation of the Jackson spectacle.

Social networking giant Facebook, which integrated its service with news giant CNN for the memorial, reported a total of 733,000 status updates during the event--about 6,000 updates per minute. Roughly 759,000 Facebook users viewed live streaming video coverage of the memorial via the CNN feed. In addition, Twitter trend research site Twist reports [1] Jackson-themed posts and tributes accounted for close to 5 percent of total tweets during the event.

For more on Jackson's digital impact:
- read this AppScout article [2]

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