KWrite

Osama Bin Laden could have hidden himself from the American military but he’s probably unable to run away from the news of Michael Jackson’s death.

Within a few hours after MJ’s death, the Thriller skyrocketed to the no. 1 album on iTunes. Many media sites experienced traffic slowdown and even crashed multiple times. As of now, 2 days since the news, there is countless number of  news articles and online talks about this event. MJ’s albums have spectacularly and totally invaded the iTunes Top Albums charts in 25 countries and undoubtedly other music stores as well.

Phenomenal statistics, aren’t they? But the mind-boggling question is: do people care about his death or about him that much? I doubt it. OK, perhaps not the right question to ask. How’s about: are there that many people who really love his music? Hm, possibly. The more interesting question to me is: how do we understand the dynamics of a mass movement like this? It definitely doesn’t equal the sum of each individual’s behavior. Geeky speaking, any linear approximation to this highly non-linear fashion could yield dreadful decisions.

MJ is a perfect example for this kind of study but by no means the only one. One can also relate this case to the Obama effect, the Paris Hilton effect (aka. “you start getting famous for being famous”), or more seriously the credit crisis that has been affecting each of us.

The internet obviously has played a big role in magnifying the scale of these phenomena. Knowing that doesn’t make us happier and you may ask: is there any new marketing or valuation model hidden in these effects that we can learn? An unknown I wish to further understand.