Susan Boyle Surpasses 100 Million Views in Viral Video
Susan Boyle isn't the only one who's been surprised by her overnight success in viral video. We measure the performance of viral videos day in and day out, our Viral Reach Database has over 100 million videos, and our office here in Boston is still buzzing about the historic numbers her videos are producing.
As of this morning, Susan Boyle has officially crossed the 100 million views mark in viral video. She's done this with over 850 clips related to her performance on Britain's Got Talent, interviews with numerous news organizations, and her rendition of "Cry Me A River" from 1999. These videos have produced 290,000 comments.
On Friday, we reported that the talented Ms. Boyle had received 47.7 million views. Those views jumped to 63.3 million on Saturday, and then vaulted again on Sunday to 85.2 million. As of noon today, she sits at 103 million views. She's averaged over 18 million views a day since Friday.
While these are staggering numbers, is Susan Boyle the biggest viral video star of all time? Though her trajectory over the weekend certainly suggests she has the potential to overtake some of the biggest names in the business, it's too early to tell if she'll become the most popular ever. We are closely monitoring her performance as well as the performance of the other heavy hitters in viral video and will provide updates as they become available.
For more information about the Susan Boyle phenomenon, check out these articles featuring our numbers since Friday:
- The Washington Post: The video of Boyle's performance in the reality show "Britain's Got Talent" has set the record for the number of views in a week -- and shows no sign of slowing down. According to Visible Measures, which tracks videos from YouTube, MySpace and other video-sharing sites, all Boyle-oriented videos -- including clips of her television interviews and her recently released rendition of "Cry Me a River," recorded 10 years ago for a charity CD -- have generated a total of 85.2 million views. Nearly 20 million of those views came overnight.
- CNET: Visible Measures, a company that clutches the pulse of the online audience and refuses to let go, has identified more than 200 unique videos of Boyle's performance. According to Visible Measures, the combined figures seem to have exceeded the performances of George Bush's shoe thrower, Tina Fey's Sarah Palin, and President Obama's victory speech.
- Mashable: While the official YouTube video of the performance reports over 32 million views, tracking company Visible Measures is monitoring the statistics for all versions of the clip, plus fan responses and interviews. Their Viral Reach Database tracks views across 150+ video sharing destinations, including YouTube. On Friday, we published metrics from the company that totalled 47 million views across 200 unique Susan Boyle-related videos. As of 10pm ET Sunday, the company has upped that number to 93.2 million views across 650 unique clips. Given the current viewing rates, the total count will almost certainly exceed 100 million views on Monday.
- paidContent: “Unlikely” singing sensation Susan Boyle is now a bona fide Translatlantic internet celebrity. Online analytics firm Visible Measures, which on Friday told Mashable it had recorded 47 million views for videos of the Britain’s Got Talent contestant, now tells the blog it revised the measure to 93.2 million by Sunday night, likely busting through the 100 million mark today. On Saturday alone, Boyle got 15.6 million views, and another 30 million on Sunday, with video comments also doubling to 250,000.
- Sky News: Web stats firm Visible Measures calculated 200 videos of Miss Boyle's song had been viewed nearly 50m times by Friday. This figure then doubled over the weekend.
- Slate: I think it’s more fun to be surprised, so I’m not going to describe what happens – other than to say that it has made a lot of people happy. According to Visible Measures, Boyle’s performance has been viewed more than 47 million times.
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The data used in this post was collected from our Viral Reach Database, a constantly growing video repository of analytic data on 100+ million Internet videos from 150+ video-sharing destinations.
