here’s some data about the effect of Michael Jackson’s death on internet traffic:

Keynote Systems reported this evening that its monitoring showed performance problems for the web sites of ABC, AOL, CBS, CNN Money, MSNBC, NBC, SF Chronicle, and Yahoo! News. “Beginning at 5:30pm (EDT), the average speed for downloading news sites doubled from less than four seconds to almost nine seconds,” said Shawn White, Keynote’s director of external operations said. “During the same period, the average availability of sites on the index dropped from almost 100% to 86%. The index returned to normal by 9:15pm (EDT).”

I knew the nerds would come through.