Twitter breaks Jackson death, Goldblum no death

Kutcher, rated number one Twitterholic, has over 2million followers. This means that more people saw the news from his tweet filtering into their computers, Blackberrys and iPhones, than watching the news at that time.

Jackson's death came only hours after the death of fellow celebrity Farah Fawcett (of Charlie's Angels fame). So some news agencies on the web decided this could become a tragic day for all celebrities, and they decided to report Jeff Goldblum fell to his death while filming in New Zealand.

Tweeters took this story and obituaries started to follow.

Also following this story was Channel Nine's clown of a celebrity reporter, Richard Wilkins. Wilkins reported Goldblum had died to a national television audience.

But... this was not true. Goldblum is alive. News of his being alive also broke officially on Twitter. Before his media people could make an annoucnement, celebrity Tweeter Kevin Spacey stated:

"Jeff Goldblum is alive and well. I just spoke to his manager. Stop these stupid rumors."

This was re-tweeted by many, including popular Tweeters like Perez Hilton and Demi Moore.

Back to the death that was in Jackson... Australia's state-owned media source, the ABC, decided to use Twitter to create a whole story about Australian celebrity testimonials for the musical genius.

Tweets by Delta Goodrem, The Veronicas, Wes Carr, Grinspoon and others are all featured in this news story.

Michael Jackson's death is a media event not too far behind Pricess Diana. The difference between the two is that new media is here for Jackson's sad passing. Twitter especially is here.

And it is a competitor to traditional media. To the extent that traditional media use it to learn of news, then break their own versions of it.

On this sad day, this blog must end with an RIP message to Michael Jackson. As Goodrem said, you will always "be remembered through song". And commiserations to the Jackson family.