Will the Jackson Memorial Break the Internet?

Written by Ryan Lawler

Tuesday, July 7. 2009 at 11:50 AM EDT 1 comment

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A number of news organizations and video sites are hosting live streaming video of the Michael Jackson memorial service today. But which will survive and which will fail?

When the service begins at 1:00 p.m. ET in the Staples Center in Los Angeles, the Internet's resiliency will once again be tested by the large number of users that are expected to "show up" to view the event from afar.

News organizations and online video sites such as Hulu, TMZ, CNN.com, E! Online, ABCNews.com, Fox News, MySpace, USA Today (via LiveStream), and CBS News (via UStream) have all lined up to offer live streaming video of the memorial service online.

We've been through this before. While online video sites set streaming records during the Presidential Inauguration earlier this year, many of those sites buckled under the weight of so many users clamoring for an online view of Barack Obama being sworn in.

But how the sites actually fare during today's memorial service will be largely out of their control. Most will be at the mercy of content delivery networks (CDNs) and video service providers that may or may not be up to the task of handling the type of flash crowd that is expected to view the service online.

As a result, the Michael Jackson memorial could be a good test to see if service providers like Akamai Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: AKAM) and Limelight Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: LLNW) are any better prepared to handle large online crowds than they were six months ago.