Millions stream Jackson memorial

UPDATE: DIGITAL: Audience falls short of Obama inauguration

By Jennifer Netherby -- Video Business, 7/7/2009

JULY 7 | DIGITAL: Video sites streaming Michael Jackson’s memorial service Tuesday delivered more than 15 million live streams to viewers watching online, making it one of the most-watched event online.

On some sites, traffic surpassed that of President Barack Obama’s inauguration, which reigns as one of the most-watched live events online.

Akamai, a content delivery network that handles traffic on the Web, said that during Jackson’s funeral, live Web streams through various sites reached a peak of 2.2 million streams, much lower than the 7 million simultaneous streams delivered for Obama’s inauguration.

But other sites saw record traffic Tuesday. MSNBC said it delivered a reported 3 million live streams, while Fox News delivered 3.4 million, according to Video Business sister publication Broadcasting & Cable. Ustream, which partnered with CBS to deliver live streaming of the Jackson funeral, said it delivered 4.6 million total streams to 1.6 million unique users. CNN said it delivered 4.4 million live streams during the service and 10.5 million total on Tuesday, making it the second busiest day ever for the site, falling short of the 26.9 million streams delivered for Obama's inauguration.

Facebook said nearly 1 million of its users tuned in to watch the live Jackson memorial service coverage from CNN, E! Online, MTV or ABC News, all of which streamed through the social-networking site.

It’s still hard to say how many viewers all those numbers translate to, given that viewers might have watched live, taken a break, and then streamed it again or switched sites during coverage.

Hulu and CNN’s live streams both sputtered and stalled at times while VB was watching, and Twitter was over capacity at several points with too many people trying to tweet during the service. A CNN spokeswoman said the site didn’t experience any video serving capacity issues Tuesday.