MARK TERRILL / Getty Images
Two of Michael Jackson's children , Paris, 11, and Prince Michael II, 7, stand with aunts Janet (left) and La Toya at the end of the Los Angeles memorial. "I just want to say I love him so much," Paris said.
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Honoring a peerless performer
The parade of famous names continued: Jennifer Hudson, Stevie Wonder, Usher, Martin Luther King 3d and his sister Bernice, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, and Kobe Bryant. Magic Johnson cracked up the crowd with an anecdote about Jackson and a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
For a performer who smashed the race barrier on MTV and did as much as anyone to make black music mainstream - not to mention was accused of trying to turn himself white through skin treatments and plastic surgery - the ceremony had a remarkably black cast. John Mayer and Brooke Shields were the only white celebs with major roles.
Another unexpected aspect was the logistics. The mayhem and traffic snarls that had been feared by city officials never materialized. The thousands of ticketholders began filing in early and encountered few problems, and traffic was actually considered by police to be lighter than normal. An estimate of up to 700,000 gawkers turned out to be about 1,000.
The City of Los Angeles set up a Web site to allow fans to contribute money to help the city pay for the memorial, which was estimated to cost $1.5 million to $4 million.
It was not clear what will happen to Jackson's body. The Forest Lawn Memorial Park Hollywood Hills cemetery, where a private service was held, is the final resting place for Jackson's maternal grandmother and such stars as Bette Davis, Andy Gibb, Freddie Prinze, Liberace, and recently deceased David Carradine and Ed McMahon.
But Jackson's brother Jermaine has expressed a desire to have him buried someday at Neverland, his estate in Southern California.
The ceremony ended with Jackson's family on stage, amid a choir, singing "Heal the World."
Millions Watch Service on the Web
Aside from the wall-to-wall coverage by television, Michael Jackson's memorial service was streamed online by many news outlets and Web sites.
Calculating just how many people watched the ceremony - around the world and across all platforms - will take several days.
Alan Wurtzel, chief of research at NBC Universal, called it "the first multi-platform significant culture event."
Several news organizations rolled out interactive features previously used for President Obama's inauguration. CNN.com, ABC, MTV, and
E! Online integrated their
live video with chatter from Facebook.
CNN said its site received
9.7 million live video streams globally as of 5 p.m. Philadelphia time. That's less than the 21.3 million streams Obama's inauguration reaped for CNN, but more than the 5.3 million streams it had on Election Day.
Facebook said there were
about 800,000 user postings on the social-networking site related to the live online broadcasts of its partners.
Akamai's Net Usage Index, which monitors global news consumption online, found
that Web traffic to news sites spiked around the time of the funeral, topping at just under four million visitors per minute - which ranks as moderately heavy traffic.
Keynote Systems Inc., which tracks Web-site performance, found that the Internet performed "within reasonable levels" yesterday, though there were slowdowns for some news sites.
