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News Sites Slammed By Michael Jackson Traffic

Posted by kdawson on from the off-to-neverland dept.

miller60 writes "Major news sites struggled to remain online yesterday evening as news of Michael Jackson's death triggered huge waves of Internet traffic. TMZ.com broke the news and was quickly overwhelmed, while Twitter turned off features to handle its load. They weren't alone. Keynote Systems reports that ABC, AOL, CBS, CNN Money, MSNBC, NBC, and Yahoo! News all experienced performance problems between 6:15 and 9 pm Eastern time, when the average availability of news sites tracked by Keynote dropped from almost 100% to 86%. The cloud computing crowd immediately jumped on the traffic jams to argue their case. 'Not have a cloud bursting strategy in the age of cloud computing isn't just wrong — it's idiotic,' wrote one cloud blogger."

9 of 387 comments (clear)

  1. Poll results by suso · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Right now the results of the /. poll are showing the majority of votes as him being forgettable. Obviously the current young generation has no idea the impact MJ had on the world. Perhaps in time they will learn.

    1. Re:Poll results by Rockoon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How about having the biggest selling album ever? Its been several decades now and nobody else has come close. Thats how big of an impact MJ had.

      It was only later that the pedophilia stuff cropped up.. but by then he was already a legend ranking right up there will Elvis, and if it werent for the pedophelia stuff his funeral would be as big as JFK's or John Lennon's (thats assuming it wont be, but it may very well actualy be)

      A freakish monster obsessed with surgical modifcations? Yep. Caught in several pedophelia scandals? Yep. One of the biggest musicians ever? Also true.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
  2. Cloud by Martz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What if everyone uses Cloud hosting?

    The Cloud works for some customers because they are depending on under-utilization of the available resources. If all the news agenices, Twitter and Facebook all used Amazon then perhaps it would create the same melt down.

    1. Re:Cloud by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's exactly what I was thinking. Right now these sites have to spend a certain amount of cash to prepare for these types of events. If they were all "in the cloud" then they wouldn't bother with that extra capacity...The cloud can cover it, right?

      As soon as some generalized event comes along that saturates a number of big "cloud" subscribers, then the whole system is going to be heavily taxed, not just a few individual sites, and by the very nature of the "cloud" thing, that will affect a wide number of sites outside the sites that would otherwise be affected.

      You're going to have to sell me on redundancy before you can get me to buy into magical cloud land.

      --
      ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
    2. Re:Cloud by ezzzD55J · · Score: 5, Insightful

      from the blogpost:

      why elasticity is so important when architecting your web application stack

      while probably technically with merit, sentences, verbiage like this make me want to be sick. exorcist sick.

  3. My Pet Project Will Save Everything by hardburn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This wouldn't have happened if they had my poorly-defined buzzword idea!

    --
    Not a typewriter
  4. I can't believe people care about this! by FatalTourist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I am going to write a whiny, holier-than-thou post on the Internet to let everyone know that I know there are more important things in the world: starving children, Iran, etc. There you go, my sweet ego...

    --


    Escape Pod Films: Sketch Comedy and Web Series
  5. He was a childhood idol to many by phorm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I remember that when I was young, MJ was very much an idol to many people my age. Who says we're looking to him for inspiration - or even as a role-model - in this day and age? No, it's the passing of something from our youth. We mourn what he was, not what he had become.

    And yes, if Stephen Hawking passed I'd imagine it would still be a fairly big event as well.

  6. Re:*sigh* by slyn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For the a lot of people who grew up during his heyday, Michael Jackson was "The King of Pop". As a singer/performer, he helped define a genre during his time. People remember the emotions of getting pumped up before a game to a song, or losing their virginity to a song, or getting through a rough time with a song. Those emotional attachments create powerful memories and connections.

    When my grandfather died my mom listened to the same Yanni CD for like 12 months straight and it never occurred to me why until like 4 years later when I made the connection that that was what we would always listen to on our weekly visits to the nursing home, and that the songs soothed her and helped her cope with the loss. Because of that, Yanni (whose music I'm not even a fan of) evokes a pretty strong emotion to me, and a much stronger emotion from my mom. The completely intangible feelings that music can give you can feel _more_ tangible or be more rememberable than the changes to our lives brought about by the achievements of some guy in a lab, even if those lab achievements mean far more to mankind in the long or short run.