Michael Jackson: The world pays tribute to King of Pop

(CNN) -- From street corners, buses and subways to phone calls, e-mails, text messages, online posts and tweets, people around the world commented, pondered, and paid tribute to pop legend Michael Jackson, who died Thursday afternoon in Los Angeles.

Around midnight at London's Leicester Square, as news of Jackson's death spread, Luis Carlos Ameida and his friends were surrounding a car listening to the star's music.

Ameida said he'd gotten tickets to see Jackson at his "This Is It" concerts beginning on July 13 in London.

"From a young age, you know, I used to have the video game," said Ameida. "I used to have the white suit, and I'd wear it on my birthday. I used to moonwalk ... I remember my mum used to send me to lessons to be like Michael Jackson. And when I heard the news, I had tears in my eyes because of that connection I had because of all the songs he used to play."

In Glastonbury, southern England, where one of the world's largest music festivals was to kick off Friday morning, initial rumors and then confirmation of Jackson's death added to confusion and then shock among festival goers. Watch British fans react »

"As I was walking back through the crowd it was the word on everyone's lips," Sally Anne Aldous, 29, told CNN over the phone. Reaction from around the world in pictures »

Backstage, Michael Jackson songs were being played in tribute, and fans talked of an impromptu memorial for the late singer at the "Stone Circle," a neolithic monument in the grounds of the venue.

In Adelaide, Australia, Christos Winter of the MJ Fan Club had organized a petition to bring Jackson to tour there. "It didn't matter if you were 60, 40 or 20 like I am. Michael Jackson's music just spoke to everyone ... It was always uplifting and happy music," Winter told CNN.

On a street in New Delhi, India, 31-year-old Sachina Verma said on Friday, "Any of the baby boomer generation or, you know, people from my age or our time, I mean they have grown up on his music. Literally, people have been inspired by his dance movements, by his music.

Tributes appeared on YouTube and CNN's iReport.

"I remember growing up in the Middle East, influenced, enjoying his music, waiting for his albums," CNN iReporter Rany Freeman, an Egyptian living in Canada, said in a video submission. "Regardless to his strange behaviors or questionable events that happened to his life, let's remember him as the great entertainer he was."

Another iReporter, Peter Maiyoh, a Kenyan student studying in the U.S. city of Kansas, Missouri, called Jackson "the voice of change," saying "he was there before Tiger Woods, before Michael Jordan, even before Barack Obama ... I hope people remember him for the work he did."

On a Facebook page dedicated to Michael Jackson, fans across the world left hundreds of messages in languages ranging from French and Spanish to Japanese and Hebrew. Watch fan reaction in Tokyo, Japan »

"SHANGHAI WILL MISS YOU! NOT JUST SHANGHAI!..EVERYONE IN THIS WORLD WILL MISS YOU! WE LOVE YOU MICHAEL!!!" wrote Vrishti Bhowmik.

Kase Ng, a 24-year-old manicurist and member of the Michael Jackson Hong Kong Fan Club, told CNN by phone she had been planning to go with four friends to his August 1concert in London.

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