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Websites struggled to cope with traffic last night and this morning as millions of internet users went online to read about the death of pop star Michael Jackson.

The first reports of the pop singer's death emerged on a showbiz website at around 10pm Irish time last night sparking a massive surge in online traffic around the globe as millions of people logged on to find out more.

It was the American site www.tmz.com that broke the news reporting it was "looking bad" for the star.

The massive level of interest caused the website to temporarily go down but that did not stop the news spreading via blogs and social networking sites.

So many people wanted to verify early reports of his death that the computers running Google's news section interpreted the "Michael Jackson" requests as an automated attack for about half an hour.

Traffic to irishtimes.com, which one of the first websites to carry reports, doubled in the hours before midnight. Elsewhere, the BBC News website reported that traffic from internet users in Britain was 48 per cent higher than usual at 4am this morning.

With the news of his death confirmed, micro-blogging site, Twitter, was full of reaction.

In a short space of time, nine of the 10 most popular topics being discussed on Twitter were related to the star. Hundreds of tributes were posted every minute, including many from fellow celebrities.

The singer rose to the top of the list of most popular topics on Twitter as news of his death became known.

The top two "trending topics" on Twitter were Jackson-related within hours of his death, pushing Farrah Fawcett, the Charlie's Angels star who also died yesterday, down to number three and the Iranian election down to number five.

"MichaelJackson" and "Thriller" were among the so-called hashtags being used by Twitter users to group messages about his death.