Now that I’ve had some time to process things, I’m ready to write about them.

There I was yesterday, having just ran a test for my webinar next week titled Social Media, SEO And Your Business in 90 Minutes, when I saw an email come in saying Michael Jackson was being rushed to the hospital. Stunned, I immediately turned on the TV to see what was going on. Almost immediately, before I’d ever gotten to a channel, another email came through saying he’d passed away.

More stunned, I get to CNN to see the news, with CNN deciding that they would run a disclaimer because they hadn’t been able to corroborate the story. I went to Twitter, because I had a feeling there would be someone talking about it there. Man, I wasn’t even close; everyone was talking about it, and only it. It was amazing because just hours earlier the conversation had been about Farrah Fawcett, and not with quite the same volume that hearing about Michael Jackson had taken.

It was such a big story that Twitter actually crashed here and there. And, it seems, most other sites that had anything to say about Michael Jackson crashed for at least some period of time. There are already stories out saying this one man caused more disruption than any other single event on the internet since the 9/11 tragedy. That’s saying something; he literally shut down the internet.

I’m not going to write about what I consider as my special relationship with Michael Jackson here; I already wrote about it on my business blog. I will say this, though. As it relates to being online, it shows just how much the rest of us can make an impact on the internet just by our presence. Imagine what we could do if we could learn how to channel even a little piece of that for our blogs, and, eventually, our online success.

Wow. R.I.P, MJ; I’m really going to miss you.