Lines of the Time - Michael Jackson's Steps

I will speak today about the biggest celebrity of pop music. Indeed, he has been called as "The King of Pop". I'm referring to Michael Jackson, of course. Los Angeles Times has recently uploaded an interactive timeline that contains all the relevant dates and events of the defunct artist. Obviously, this interactive timeline has no sense if it is not related to and multimedia special of the artist. I'm going to analyse this kind of multimedia resource that makes to the user an easier way to understand a lot of aspects of the life of Michael Jackson.

The main website of the special is in The Complete Coverage of Michael Jackson. But I'm going to focus on the timeline.


To see the full image, please click on it (I have had problems with the quality and compression of the images, sorry!)

Structure: here we can see that the special is divided in various sections: Photos, Map and Videos, Panoramas, Articles, Selected Blog Posts and Selected Archives. The timeline is in the section of Articles.

The timeline is divided in vertical columns, each one for a year. There are images with text that summarizes important events of the Jackson family:



Formats: there are text and images. These are the basic important elements. Sometimes there are hyperlinks to videos, or to articles and news about certain days, like in this image:


Features: it is a timeline, all the features have been explained on the images.

This timeline is oriented to the user. There are no characteristics of the Web 2.0, because there are no social aspects, like comments of the readers or something like that.


All in all, this tool is very useful to the user (specially for the fans and biographers of Michael Jackson), because it contains the basic information with very simple elements like text and images, but also offers the opportunity to external links with videos, articles, essays...etc.

Comparative: the BBC has a very similar timeline that permits the user to know the British History. The BBC has a multimedia special about History with this timeline. There are obvious differences, like the use of colors, the division of the History according to the different states of United Kingdom (Wales, England, Scotland, Northern Ireland), the "journeys", that means that you can choose different themes and see how they are evolve in the british history (Slavery, Women's Rights, Technology, Queens and Kings)... This timeline is more sophisticated, but its complicate structure makes the user more difficult to find the wished information.



I hope you find it helpful.

. Good night, and good luck!