My goal in life is to give to the world what I was lucky to receive: the ecstasy of divine union through my music and my dance

Net struggle

THE Internet struggled to cope last night as millions of fans worldwide rushed to verify Michael Jackson's death.

Google said that when the news first broke, it feared it was under attack from hackers and shut down for about half an hour.

Among US users alone, 36 out of the top 100 Google search terms were linked to Jackson's death.

With the news of his death confirmed, social networking site Twitter suffered a temporary shutdown as fans rushed to pay their respects.

According to analysis tool Twist, 22.6 per cent of the messages posted were about Jackson.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said, "We saw an instant doubling of tweets per second the moment the story broke.

"It is the biggest jump in tweets per second since the US presidential election." Before long, nine of the 10 most popular topics on Twitter were related to the star.

Fans also logged on the MySpace page of his former wife, Lisa Marie Presley, to pay tribute.

Jackson's songs have already started racing up the i-Tunes charts in the face of massive demand.

Death spurs sales