Funnily enough, I was on IRC when someone announced that Michael Jackson had died, rather than on Twitter, and the first thing I did was to go to my Twitter cli

Funnily enough, I was on IRC when someone announced that Michael Jackson had died, rather than on Twitter, and the first thing I did was to go to my Twitter client to see if anyone else had mentioned it. The fact that everyone was talking about MJ dying confirmed that the IRC announcement was not a hoax, or at least not a hoax by the announcer. After that, Twitter was neither more nor less useful than CNN, which waited until they had confirmations signed in triplicate before they announced that yes, MJ was actually dead. On the other hand, Twitter was a lot more fun than CNN, with various bits of irreverence and word-plays on MJ songs popping up here and there on the Twitter-stream... something that traditional media would (rightly) never dare to do. Death is funnier on Twitter.