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Online traffic soared as millions of people turned to the web to find out the latest news about the singer's health.

Celebrity gossip website TMZ.com, at about 9pm, reported that Jackson had been taken to hospital in Los Angeles. The site reportedly received a tip-off that a paramedic had visited the singer's home.

TMZ said that Jackson had suffered a heart attack and his mother was on the way to visit him.

Following this report, speculation began spreading across dozens of other news websites, blogs and social networks, including Twitter.

Jackson's death was confirmed at 3.15pm Los Angeles time, but thousands of internet users had already begun uploading tributes.

The volume of traffic reportedly temporarily crashed TMZ, sending users to other gossip blogs such as Perez Hilton's, which also reportedly crashed.

At the same time, the tens of thousands of tweets regarding Michael Jackson flooded micro blogging site Twitter, which also reportedly crashed under the sheer volume of traffic.

According to the Twitter tracking tool Twist, at around 11.30pm GMT last night and the initials "MJ" accounted for about 9% of the tweets.

In total, at least 30% of tweets were remarking upon the musician's tragic passing.

This morning, Michael Jackson is ranked on seven of the top ten trending topics on Twitter through the phrases -- "thriller", "pop", "#Michael Jackson", "P Michael Jackson", "MJ's", "RIP MJ", and "MTV", which are tweets from users mostly saying that MTV is playing Michael Jackson videos.

Jackson is also ranked in four of Google's top ten trends this morning, under the topics "Michael Jackson died", "Janet Jackson on Michael's death", "Michael Jackson's kids pics" and "Michael Jackson's son Blanket".

The incident provided an indication of social media's ability to rapidly distribute globally-significant news at a speed far greater than that of print media.

Early editions of many UK newspapers such as The Independent, The Guardian, the Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph and Metro missed publishing the story.

Update: Channel Five is to show a tribute to Jackson at 7pm-8pm tonight. The programme will be fronted by Natasha Kaplinsky.