Michael Jackson, King of Facebook

As news of Michael Jackson’s death began to spread last Thursday, the flood of people seeking information about the singer overloaded several Web sites and services. Many expected the same on Tuesday, when a memorial and tribute service was held in Los Angeles to celebrate the pop icon.

The event drew millions of fans and spectators, both online and off, but this time the Internet didn’t crack under the strain.

“Over all, the Internet is holding up great,” said Jennifer Donovan, a spokeswoman for Akamai, a company that handles Internet traffic for a variety of large clients. “We have not heard of any sites being down during this event.”

Traffic to news sites supported by Akamai peaked at 3.9 million visitors a minute at the start of the memorial service before sharply dropping off, suggesting that people were sticking with the live video streams rather than surfing around. By comparison, on June 25, when word began to circulate of Mr. Jackson’s hospitalization and death, Akamai said that traffic to news Web sites topped out at 4.2 million visitors a minute.

Traffic to live video streams drew the most attention: As of 3 p.m. New York time, close to 3 million video streams were being watched online, about three times the average, according to Akamai.

The figures were eclipsed by the viewership during the inauguration of President Obama in January, when the total live video streams topped out at more than 7 million, causing many viewers to report choppy or sluggish video. Over all it was the second-largest traffic day on Akamai’s network, after the inauguration.

As it did for the inauguration, Facebook teamed with CNN.com to put a stream of personal status updates next to live video coverage of the memorial service. Facebook said that 30 minutes after the start of the service, 800,000 status updates had flowed through the system, or roughly 6,000 a minute. In addition, the company said there were 300,000 users logged into the special Facebook-CNN site.

The figures exceeded the surge during the inauguration, when the total number of Facebook updates on the CNN.com feed was 600,000.

Facebook also said that Mr. Jackson had close to 7 million fans on his official Facebook page, giving him the largest single following of any public figure on the site — including President Obama, who clocks in with just 6 million fans.