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SOCIAL MEDIA BREAKS THE NEWS; AUDIENCE FLOCKS & ADVERTISERS TAKE NOTICE

Last Monday at 10:25 PM EST, Keith Urbahn, a former aide to Donald Rumsfeld, tweeted:

Figure 1: The Tweet Read ‘Round The World

Source: Twitter

From 10:45 PM – 2:20 AM EST, 27.9 million tweets were generated, breaking the record for the highest sustained rate of tweeting at an average of 3,000 Tweets Per Second (TPS).  During President Obama’s address, the rate of tweeting peaked at 5,106 TPS.  Notably, the record rate is 6,939 TPS which took place at New Years 2011 in Japan (a country with advanced smartphone technology).

YouTube views of President Obama’s speech exceeded 5.5 million views (his White House Correspondents Dinner speech got 7.2 million in five days, the most ever for a Presidential speech).

Figure 2: News of OBL’s Death Yielded Highest Sustained Rate of Tweeting Ever

Source: Twitter

While Urbahn’s tweet spread viral news of Osama Bin Laden’s death, Sohaib Athar aka @ReallyVirtual had actually “broken” the story hours earlier, unknowingly live-tweeting the raid from his first person vantage point in Abbottabad, Pakistan:

Since his tweets were discovered, @reallyvirtual’s Twitter account surged to over 100K followers, from less than 100, and prompted the IT consultant to release a humorous FAQ page where he could direct countless inquiries.

The previous week witnessed another occurrence of social media’s growing impact on real world events.

Mainstream media took advantage of the content being produced through social media by integrating the user-generated content during the royal nuptials.  Most notably, ABC broadcast the royal wedding live direct from its Twitter feed, while attempting to create an interactive experience between social media and its broadcast.

Figure 5: While The Internet Loved The Royal Wedding, The Flower Girl Was Less Enthused

Source: Today.com

ABC and Twitter came up with hashtags such as #RoyalSuccess and #RoyalMess to describe people’s reactions to dresses and to describe the #RoyalKiss.  Messages posted on both Facebook and Twitter were read from the screen, and a TwitterTracker was used to gauge user engagement in different aspects of the coverage.  As an ABC News executive commented, “Social media isn’t a novelty anymore, and you can’t treat it as such.  It’s not something you can even just do.  You have to constantly iterate and push things forward, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”

Figure 6: ABC Integrated Social Media To Provide More Complete Coverage of The Royal Wedding

Source: Twitter

Large scale planned events like the Royal Wedding or the Super Bowl attract new users to social media platforms and encourage enhanced interactions as users congregate to engage with the event.

Additionally, advertisers are increasingly embracing social media to insert their brands into the conversations around these major events.  We were particularly impressed by Unilever’s Magnum Ice Cream usage of the #RoyalWedding hashtag.

When Twitter users clicked on the #royalwedding hashtag, they were directed to the day’s Promoted Trend, which was sponsored by “Magnum Ice Cream.”  Clicking on “Magnum Ice Cream” then directed Twitter users to Magnum’s Facebook page (which now has over 1 million fans).

Figure 7: Unilever’s Magnum Ice Cream Social Media Campaign Yielded Massive Earned Media Impressions

Source: Facebook

Figure 8: Unilever’s Promoted #RoyalWedding Significantly Outperformed @ClarenceHouse’s #RW2011

Source: Twitter

Figure 9: Unilever’s Campaign Has Resulted In Owned Audience Which the Company Can Reach & Impact

Source: Klout

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