The Choice of First or Well

by

The fact that TMZ not only broke the story of Michael Jackson’s death, but also proved to be the main source of information for a lot of traditional publishing outlets makes you think. There’s no doubt that the blogs were first, and old media stumbled to verify and catch up in the wake.

In the words of Jason Preston, you can do something First, or you can do it Well.

The reasoning is interesting. If you do it first you get cited, seen, credit, traffic, readers, and so on. But if you do it well you can provide “real analysis” and “be interesting”. [Read more…]

The Death of Michael Jackson: New Media Broke the Story, Old Media OK’d It

by

The death of pop icon Michael Jackson is dominating the web right now. TMZ broke the story, went down under the strain, but is back up now. Meanwhile, various sites and tweets talk about Twitter getting some fail whales and massive traffic spikes, which isn’t all that surprising after all. The King of Pop has been in the limelight for so long, it is just huge. At a time, the trending topics on Twitter was more or less exclusively dominated by his death, with people forgetting all about Iran for a little while at least.

People rush to Jackson’s Facebook page, currently sporting 880 991 fans, but expect that number to grow tremendously. Facebook overall is performing sluggishly now, possibly due to the artist’s death. It will be interesting to follow up on traffic spikes and surges later on. [Read more…]