The great social barometer

David — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:40:38 +0000

Michael Jackson is surely the first mega star to die in the digital age. Many people predicted that he would top the charts and the level of his domination in record stores was probably not a big surprise – we’ve seen that before. What has gripped me is how the internet absorbed our reaction and became an incredibly powerful social barometer.

I know that this is not the first event that has unfolded before our computer and mobile screens – but I cannot think of any other event dominating the news feeds, Twitter AND also triggering unprecedented digital revenues (see MJ’s near total domination of the iTunes charts across the world, as well as the matter of the 2.6 million downloads of his music in just one week).

And it doesn’t stop there; Mashable reported yesterday that Jacko’s fan page on Facebook went from 80,000 fans (before his death) to 6.7 million… eclipsing even previous ‘king of Facebook’ Barack Obama, and there was the online lottery to ‘win’ tickets to today’s memorial service.

This surge of Michael Jackson fever will undoubtedly slow down in the next few days, but I do think that we have witnessed a digital phenomenon like we have never seen before… and may never see again?

And one more thing – this moon walk video was viewed 14.5m times in the last few weeks on YouTube. Wow!

Digital DNA » Michael Jackson

The great social barometer