San Francisco (CNN) -- Steve Jobs has consistently managed to capture the world's attention with his stage events. On Wednesday evening, the world took to the Web to express their condolences about the news of his death. Facebook news feeds filled with links and anecdotes about the impact that technology -- and more specifically, Apple's technology -- had on users' lives. Messages on Twitter and the site's list of trending topics quickly became dominated by phrases such as "RIP Steve Jobs," "#ThankYouSteve" and "iHeaven." The flood of messages slowed Twitter to a crawl at times or produced error messages saying the site was over capacity.
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Facebook, Twitter, other sites flooded with tributes
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Chatter on social networks provided a rare glimpse behind Apple's walls
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Jobs' 2005 commencement speech to Stanford was a popular video
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Google added "Steve Jobs, 1955 - 2011" to its search page
Hewitt said he braced for rudeness, as Jobs has been criticized for, but he described @placeholder as kind and energetic.