Heather Hopkins posts on the rise of UK rocker Lil’ Chris (the short kid in the second series of Rock School, UK TV viewers) from a search engine perspective and showing the impact of social networks. The graph really says it all:
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There’s little to add to Heather’s excellent post, which I just wanted to draw attention to. It’s a great example of social networks propelling someone from zero to hero. As she says, the search engine traffic didn’t really start until he’d become a phenomenon on MySpace and Bebo. Early on, these sites apparently counted for 64% of the upstream traffic to the Lil’ Chris site.
It is interesting how social network traffic (brown line) has tailed off as search traffic has increased (green line). The reasons for this will be familiar to anyone who went to school. Once a cult phenomenon goes mainstream then it seems it just isn’t cool for cats any more. Let’s hope that the recent dip in searches will have been curtailed by the release of his shot at Christmas No. 1, Gettin’ Enough last week. (YouTube Link. Chris seems to have forsaken Gene Simmons for Pete Shelley and/or Feargal Sharkey nowadays. Good move.)
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Good post. Who is Pete Sheelley?
Lead singer of the Buzzcocks. Go to Amazon right now and get the 2 CD version of Modern. The second CD is a Buzzcocks’ greatest hits. Gettin’ Enough is basically the same as ‘Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t Have Fallen In Love With)’.
Except not as good.