Since its release on 17th July, The Dark Knight has managed to stay at the top of the box-office chart for four straight weeks. Looking at its overwhelming box-office success, I became curious about its popularity in the online world. I compared the search trend for the Dark Knight against the other two summer blockbusters, Iron Man and Indiana Jones – The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, during their release weeks and 2 weeks before and after their releases.

As shown in the graph, we do not find any concrete evidence that the box-office rush for The Dark Knight in fact translated into any substantial, extended advantage in online search. Indiana Jones was able to create more curiosity among people than The Dark Knight or Iron man before release. After release, the search trend for the Dark Knight took off, surpassing the other movies by a huge margin, but it was only for a short time. Two weeks after release, search volume for The Dark Knight was on par with Indiana Jones. It’s also interesting to note that although Iron Man was able to become a box-office winner (to date it has earned almost $2M more than Indiana Jones), its search, except one week after release, remained below Indiana Jones during all the surrounding weeks.

It’s logical to assume that people tend to search for a movie around the release time, and eventually their curiosity declines as their interest shifts to the other new/upcoming releases. The trend, what we see here is consistent with this norm.

Given that all three of these movies had different selling points, I was interested to see what was driving the search for the movies. The following table shows the top six search keywords surrounding the movies. It is not surprising that for all three, the top search keyword is about the movie itself. However, the interesting thing to note here is that whereas for Iron Man and Indiana Jones, movie-inspired games appeared among the top six terms, for The Dark Knight the buzz-worthy terms were Joker and IMAX. Moreover, for both Iron man and The Dark Knight, the possibility of sequels seemed to become a great source of curiosity among the audiences, whereas for the Indiana Jones movie-related accessories became a source of interest for many.

I was also interested to see if the recent popularity of Indiana Jones and The Dark Knight also spilled over into renewed interest in their previous installments. Before the release week, the search for Batman Begins trailed behind only Raiders of the Lost Ark, and after release it surpassed not only all three previous Indiana Jones movies individually, but the search trend combining the three Indiana Jones movies too. No doubt, the tremendous success of The Dark Knight generated new interest in Batman Begins - in fact, I am ready to watch it again.

Since its premier, The Dark Knight has been breaking all sorts of records. Now that it has become the third biggest movie ever, what remains to be seen is if it can claim the crown for top grosser of all time. I think it has the capability to replace Titanic at the number one position, but it probably won’t be able to break the other record currently held by also Titanic, which is to remain at number one for 15 consecutive weeks. (Tidbit: Did you know that Christian Bale was almost cast for the role of Jack Dawson in Titanic?) However, given the next week’s release lineup, it can very well stay on the top for at least one more week. Personally, I would like to see it become the top grosser of all time, rather than some mindless movie which became a box-office hit based on success of its predecessors only (eg: Pirates of the Caribbean : At World’s End ), but a lot of it depends on how the playing field will look like in the coming weeks.

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.

Season seven of American Idol started with lots of buzz and now we are almost ready crown our next Idol. But before we gear up for next week’s finale, let’s see who is buzzing more in the online world. Starting on March 9th, after the selection of the final twelve contestants, we see that a steady growth in search activity for David Cook during the nine week period with two spikes in between. Looking closely at the data for those two weeks, I found that a lot of the search followed his performance of “Billie Jean” on March 25th and “You Will Always be My Baby” on April 15th. On the other hand the search trend is pretty uneven for David Archuleta. The data is consistent with the fact that David C. started as a dark horse but eventually proved himself to be a strong contender, which might have continuously increased interest in him. Whereas, David A. started as the one to beat from early in the season, and continued to maintain his stature with some minor faux pas here and there. This might explain the initial interest in him, which eventually could have declined because of the predictably of his performance onstage, and even the occasional buzz surrounding his father was not enough to stir things up.

Now that we have seen David C. emerging as a favorite among the online community, it would be interesting to see if this is true among all age groups. Since David C is eight years older than David A, does that mean his fans are also adults? The data shows this is indeed the case, where we see David A.’s fans are mostly young, below 24 and David C.’s fans are mostly above 24.

Now, does the recent lead for David C. in online searches imply that he is going to be a sure winner? Not necessarily. A quick look at past years’ search trends will support this view. We see that the search trend for Blake Lewis lies above the trend for Jordin Sparks for almost the entire period with significant increase in later periods, but we all know how it ended. Interestingly, overall the search trends lie much below this year, which is not surprising; given that last season was one of the worst so far.

Conversely, this season both contestants are undoubtedly talented, thus the verdict can go either way. Although personally, neither of were my pick (Michael Johns was my favorite), I feel that David Archuleta is going to win. Having said that, I have no doubt that post-AI, David C will be successful; however, I am not so sure about David A. Even if he wins, since he is just 17, a lot depends on how he evolves as an artist.

But whatever the outcome will be, if our previous seasons have taught us anything, it is that winning the title does not mean much. We all know where season 5 contestant Chris Daughtry is today, but does anyone know where the season 5 Idol is?

PS. Stay tuned for a post-AI blog.