Now that another season of American Idol has completed its run, it is time to look at the hits and misses of the season. If I have to single out the most shocking moment of this season then it would be the margin by which David Cook beat his fellow contestant. I must admit, I felt sorry for poor David Archuleta, I really thought that the winner would be announced by a small margin, not by astonishing almost 12 million votes. It seems like David Cook’s not-so-impressive finale performance sent his fans into frenzy. It turned out to be more of a contest between the fans of two David’s than between the contestants themselves. However, the result was consistent with the search trend that we saw in my past blog post. Following the result show, David Cook not only maintained his lead over David A, his search in fact sky–rocketed and slowed down only a bit in the following week.

The second shocking moment, in my book, would be Syesha’s third position finish. I never understood her advancement into third position after surviving several almost elimination moments. Even the activities of the online community umtil the week Carly S. got eliminated did not indicate such results. Looking at the search trends during this time, we find that she trailed below not only the other seemingly strong candidates but also below another unlikely surviving contestant, Kristy Lee Cook. This is indeed surprising that with so little buzz surrounding her and her mediocre talent she went so far.

The other surprising moment for me was the early elimination of Michael Johns. As I already mentioned, he was my favorite contestant. However, I do agree that Michael Johns never came out of his comfort zone and did something impressive, but he did undeniably have talent, especially compared to KLC. It’s still a mystery how KLC outlived Michael J. In search, KLC started and finished above Michael Johns but lost to him for few weeks in the middle. This also makes me interested in looking what is driving the search for all of the candidates.

As expected, the top five search terms for the female contestants are mostly about their appearances and personal life rather than talent or performances. Moreover, as the third top search term for Michael Johns indicates, I am not the only one who was surprised by his early elimination from the race.

Now that we have our winner, what remains to be seen is who makes their marks the most. Are we going to get another Chris Daughtry or Jennifer Hudson from this bunch of hopefuls? Will Carly Smithson or Kristy Lee Cook be lucky the second time around in releasing successful albums? Can Syesha finally be able to convince me that she in fact deserved to be the second runner up? I guess only time will tell.

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