Jackson memorial attracts web crowds

Michael Jackson's memorial attracted huge interest on the web though fell short of online viewership records.

Tuesday's public service, attended by celebrities and the public in the Staples Centre in Los Angeles, attracted worldwide attention with most of the major broadcasters such as BBC and CNN streaming the funeral live.

Internet traffic jumped as much as 33 per cent as people got online to watch the funeral and share messages.

As it did with President Obama's inauguration, CNN teamed up with social-networking website Facebook to let people share messages, which were posted alongside the streaming video.

Michael Jackson: online tributes

Nearly 10 million people watched on CNN, which was the most since Obama's inauguration when 27 million people tuned in.

On Twitter, conversations tagged with Michael Jackson dominated the micro-blogging site.

However, compared with Jackson's sudden death, when several websites crashed due to the huge spike in internet traffic, websites were able to cope with Tuesday's traffic.