July 7 (Bloomberg) -- Michael Jackson’s memorial service may draw at least as many online viewers as the record-setting inauguration of President Barack Obama.

MSNBC.com expects traffic for its live video stream to be “near record-breaking, if not record-breaking,” said Gina Stikes, a spokeswoman for the news Web site. During the hour of Obama’s inauguration, the site had a record 4 million unique video-stream viewers, Stikes said. Time Warner Inc.’s CNN.com, which also had a record for Obama’s swearing-in, will have additional streaming capacity today.

“We’re certainly braced for an extremely high-traffic day,” Jennifer Martin, a CNN spokeswoman, said by telephone.

Web sites including CNN.com and social-networking site Facebook have been flooded with visitors and tributes to the “King of Pop” since the singer died June 25 at age 50. More than 6.96 million Facebook users have signed up as fans of Jackson’s Facebook profile, surpassing Obama’s 6.44 million supporters. Facebook and CNN have paired up to allow viewers of CNN.com’s live video of the service to post comments to Facebook without leaving the video player, CNN said in a statement.

Akamai Technologies Inc., a provider of software that makes Web sites load faster, is prepared for Jackson’s memorial to be “one of the largest, if not the largest” Internet streaming event the company has supported, said spokeswoman Jennifer Donovan. Akamai provides services to sites such as CNN.com and New York Times Co.’s NYTimes.com.

International Sites

“We got interest from international sites beyond what we got for the Obama inauguration,” Donovan said in a telephone interview. “There’s a lot more global interest for this.”

Today’s service will include Los Angeles Lakers basketball player Kobe Bryant, “Dreamgirls” star Jennifer Hudson and singers Stevie Wonder and Mariah Carey, according to a statement yesterday from Jackson family spokesman Ken Sunshine. It started after 10 a.m. in Los Angeles.

On the day of Jackson’s death, CNN’s Web traffic increased fivefold to more than 20 million page views between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. Eastern Time, Martin said.

CNN.com delivered 26.9 million live video streams the day of Obama’s inauguration, topping its previous high by more than fourfold, New York-based CNN said in January. At its peak, the Web site was furnishing 1.3 million simultaneous live streams, CNN said at the time.

Obama Inauguration

For Obama’s oath of office and inaugural address, about 13 million unique U.S. video viewers accessed 49.5 million videos across CNN.com, FoxNews.com and MSNBC.com, according to Reston, Virginia-based research firm ComScore Inc.

Live video of the Jackson tribute will also be streamed on Hulu.com, using footage from Fox News, the companies said. Hulu is partly owned by Fox News parent News Corp. and NBC Universal. News Corp.’s MySpace.com social-network site will show the memorial live. CBS News, owned by CBS Corp., and ABC News, owned by Walt Disney Co., also said they plan to show the service live on their Web sites.

MSNBC.com viewers will be able to see live video and a stream of posts on Twitter.com pertaining to Jackson, MSNBC, owned by General Electric Co.’s NBC Universal, said in a statement today.

Time Warner, based in New York, fell 44 cents to $23.80 at 1:49 p.m. New York time in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Disney, based in Burbank, California, fell 13 cents to $22.96. GE, based in Fairfield, Connecticut, declined 19 cents to $11.29. CBS slid 15 cents to $5.96. New York-based News Corp. dropped 10 cents to $8.44 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah Rabil in New York at srabil@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: July 7, 2009 13:52 EDT