Jackson’s death a boon for Twitter

One of Twitter’s co-founders said yesterday that the death of pop star Michael Jackson caused the microblogging site to reach a record number of posts.

“We saw an instant doubling of tweets per second the moment the story broke…This particular news about the passing of such a global icon is the biggest jump in tweets per second since the U.S. presidential election,” Biz Stone told the L.A. Times.

The Times also reported Jackson-related tweets reached 5,000 per minute at its peak, causing the site’s processing speed to slow to a near halt.

The death of Jackson may dominate the airwaves today, but the cap-and-trade legislation in the House may cause a mini-surge of its own.