The King of Pop is no more. Michael Jackson died on Thursday. Thriller was one of the first albums (and I still have the cassette tape) that I owned (Pac-Man Fever was the first). He was THE pop icon of the 1980s.

I should clarify that the Michael Jackson I remember was the African American, one glove wearing, moonwalking, young singer and dancer who influenced such dance moves as the robot and moonwalk. He is NOT the troubled, odd looking, eccentric Wacko Jacko of recent years, who had possibly became one of the weirdest people in Hollywood.

His Thriller album sold 45 million records, making it the best-selling album of all time. Posters of Micheal Jackson were placed prominently next to my oversized swatch watch wall clock on my purple bedroom walls. My friends and I would watch MTV (when the video news channel actually PLAYED music videos) waiting for the Billie Jean, or Beat It videos, or the short film Thriller, so we could press the “record” button on the VCR.

I remember watching in 1983 as he moonwalked for the first time on TV. If you have trouble viewing the video, see it here on YouTube. (The whole video is more than 5 minutes long - he moonwalks around 3:40.)



I taped the 1984 Grammy's where he won eight awards, but the part my friends and I watched over and over was the moment he took of his sunglasses. As you may recall, he rarely took his aviator-like specs off in public.

His style was eccentric, wearing only one white glove, black highwater pants with white socks and black shoes, and his high pitched "woo hoo" voice did not make him a "manly man"...but could he ever dance!

His death interested me not only because he was one of my childhood icons, but the way the news spread. I first heard of it from a text from my dad during Zach’s tumbling class around 4:30 pm on Thursday. Immediately I checked the twitter stream (#michaeljackson), Facebook and CNN mobile to get the latest information. By the time I got home about 5:30 pm, it was one of the only trending topics on twitter, plus many of my friends on Facebook had posted status updates about the news. Twitter went down twice during the next hour, due to the large volume of users. All the 24 hour news stations were covering it, and some even had special reports about his life later that night. According to mashable.com, 30% of all tweets were about Michael Jackson, a conservative estimate. Google, Yahoo, Facebook and YouTube also saw a major increase in activity, all related to his death.

As I am writing this (in the wee hours of Saturday morning), it is still a trending topic and coverage is high on all news stations. His video views on YouTube are in the millions with new comments posted frequently. All the major news websites continued coverage and updates. A picture and status update I posted via twitter on Thursday has received nearly 700 hits. I only have 266 followers, so somehow its made it's way to more than 430 more people.

People were posting iReports left and right, and a remembrance was organized and spread through social media in Wichita.

It will be interesting to see what kind of activity his funeral brings.