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.

Wanna see a movie? You’re not alone. Every weekend, millions of Americans head to their local cineplex to trade $20 for questionably buttered popcorn, sugar soda and a seat cushion in the name of entertainment. Magazine franchises, personal careers and the entire microeconomy of Southern California rise and fall with the popularity waves of this weekly ritual. As with most things, many moviegoers turn to the internet to guard against the bad movie experience, and a shortlist of the most-searched terms on the top movie reference sites indicates where popular opinion settled for the month.

Fresh off its Oscar sweep, the Coen Brothers’ award-winning No Country for Old Men ranks at the top in March, edging out the Harry Potter juggernaut, both of which hold a comfortable lead over the rest. This blended share metric also reveals the buzz of upcoming movies (the yet-to-be-released Batman sequel catches the 10th spot) as well as general television trends (ABC’s Lost grabs #3).

An extended updated list of the most searched cinema terms is available on Compete’s DataHub. Of course, popularity in the film world is short-lived, and few of March’s high-rollers will survive to the next month. Make sure to check back soon to see what bubbled to the top in the most recent of cinema searches!

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.

For me, one of the most exciting shows of the winter season (I still can’t believe Nip/Tuck is over, damn you writers strike!) was NBC’s remake of popular game show American Gladiators. This was very exciting for many Americans, who felt like anyone could compete (like bowling) and that it embodied many aspects of the American Dream (work with me here). The media spend for the launch of this show was massive (I think I saw a super bowl ad?) and I believe it was a television success, but it sure did send internet surfers for a loop. At the time of the show (not anymore) I assume that NBC was unable to purchase the domain americangladiators.com and was forced to bury its content deep on the NBC home page. In the months leading up to the launch of the show, (October and November 2007) more than 3x as many search terms lead to that domain where users were greeted with an “American Gladiators 2008 – Coming soon” picture that looked like it was straight out of the Nintendo Entertainment System and no link to the NBC site. On average during the first season just over ¼ of all traffic to the Gladiator content on the NBC website came from search.

Once people find the website, the most popular thing for them to do, of course, is view the photos and bios of the steroid freaks… I mean peak conditioned athletes who call themselves gladiators. (Please don’t hurt me.) The top viewed profiles for the female gladiators were Crush (50%) who seems so sweet and innocent until she hits you upside the head with a pugel stick and Helga (44%) who looks like she should wear the Viking helmet on Flavor of Love season 39. For the male gladiators, the Wolf man ties with Titan both at 41% of profile surfers checking them out. Toa, who mimics New Zealand Haka war dances before events, trails them both with 34%. The interesting part comes when you break down which photo galleries people view. Over the three months of the first season almost 80% of all photo gallery traffic viewed photos of Crush. To be fair, she was the featured gladiator towards the end of the season and we don’t blame you for wanting to get a better look. None of the male gladiators were able to muster up more than about 10% with the exception of Titan (very true to his name) at 17% and Wolf (hands down the most clinically insane gladiator) at 13%.

Of people who checked out the new versions of the arena events, the most popular (71%) was a new event, the Earthquake. This event is basically sumo wrestling on a 12-foot diameter platform suspended from the ceiling with bungee chords and the loser is the one who falls to their death, I mean the mats below. The second highest was the 2008 version of the Eliminator (61%) which has basically turned into an endurance race involving swimming under a fire (why doesn’t anyone dive instead of jumping in?) climbing up cargo nets while soaking wet and losing your front teeth when you smash face-first into the inverted treadmill. While this is the culmination of the show, the best part is watching the winner give a speech in between gasping breaths while the other competitor is still completing the course and promptly falls over behind the winner and rolls into the fetal position.

I’ll admit I was very excited for this show when it first was announced, anticipating the first few episodes. I reconnected with my inner hulk-o-maniac and I wore my PJs like it was Saturday morning eating Captain Crunch. A good time and a few laughs were had, but there is one thing that I cannot ever forgive the new producers of the show for… How could you change assault? That was the best event! It’s hard to describe the new version but it seems to be influenced by the creators of Legends of the Hidden Temple and now you have to load the weapons while dodging 100 mph tennis balls. Well, as Wolf likes to say (in-between howling at the ceiling), “I’m still hungry!” and I’m going to keep getting my American Gladiator updates from E’s “The Soup.”

For those of us who spend our careers immersed in digital marketing and all things “online,” a live webcast doesn’t seem like big news. So when Oprah announced a live web event as part of her book club it didn’t seem like a huge deal to me (admittedly, I’m not one of her regular fans). What happened may surprise you. It surprised me!

The number of visitors to Oprah.com topped five million in February, making her site one of the top 225 ranked sites in the United States. To put this in perspective, more people went to check out Oprah.com in February than the popular NASCAR, eHarmony, Fidelity, Barnes and Noble or Walgreens sites.

Even for Oprah, more than five million monthly visitors represented large month-over-month and year-over-year growth. The site traffic jumped 69 percent from January 2008 and was more than 50% above its February 2007 level. So what contributed to these gains? Was the live web event featuring the bestselling author Eckhart Tolle a factor? The answer to that question is YES.

• Visitors to Oprah.com held steady between 800,000 and 1,000,000 per week in January. Then on January 30, “A New Earth” by Eckhart Tolle was named to Oprah’s Book Club selection. In February traffic to the site increased dramatically following the selection and announcement of a live web event, topping 2 million per week more than once.
• Buoyed by the publicity, traffic to Eckhart’s site surged in February to more than 70,000 the week prior to the first class. Quite a jump from a scant 2,000 people per week at the beginning of the year!
• From February 24 through March 1, additional data reveals that approximately 50% of the 1.7 million Oprah.com visitors went to the Live Web Event Registration page.

After the first class, more than 300,000 people showed interest in (re)watching the webcast. Reportedly, demand was so high for the initial event however, that some people had difficulty logging in. This trouble may have influenced post-event interest.

The appeal of the live web event becomes even more evident when we take a daily view. The total time people spent on Oprah.com as a percentage of the total time spent online by all U.S. internet users more than doubled on the night of the first live event.

Oprah’s live event with author Eckhart Tolle is a series of 10 weekly classes. Stay tuned to see if Oprah’s “students” remain interested or if they become drop-outs as the class wears on. A sneak peak at Compete’s daily Attention metric through March 10 (the date of the second class) reveals that interest may have waned quickly, and then bumped up again slight for the second session.

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We all know this person: constantly showing up in your Facebook news feed with status updates, added friends and wall comments. The “stickiness” of most social sites is unrivaled by any other type of site, a point that the behavior of hardcore members really drive home. These “Social Addicts” check their beloved site constantly and have helped encourage similar behavior from other users.

Knowing how different Facebook and MySpace are in terms of design, functionality and usage, how much do “addicts” of these social networks differ? You may have read some of our posts on BehaviorMatch before, but this analysis essentially highlights the online behavior that is specific to a particular group of users. This analysis is designed to help with media buying, but in the case of social networks it can also help define the psychographic makeup of the group, and how “addicts” generally use their favorite social site.

The table below shows the sites that MySpace and Facebook Addicts* visited substantially more than the average internet user. So what do these users do when they aren’t getting their social network fix?

• To be fair, the MySpace list is filtered. An untouched list of the top twenty most popular websites among MySpace addicts would consist entirely of sites focused on modifying personal profile pages.
• After scrubbing out a majority of the sites focused on MySpace layouts, it seems that the hardcore users of this MySpace are still primarily teens, as sites focused on proms (meprom.com), shoes (kicksaholic.com), and Alternative music (warpedtour.com) bubble to the top of the list.
• It’s no surprise that hardcore Facebook users have a high affinity to some sites supporting Facebook applications, but the applications they interact with the most is telling of their online interests. It appears gaming (socialgn.com), dating (sexappealhq.com), music (garageband.com), and interacting with friends (quizapps.com) are all a core online activity to Facebook addicts.

MySpace and Facebook are two well established sites with massive audiences. Twitter, on the other hand, is a much smaller, growing site devoted to communication. In some ways it could be seen as the direction the social web is heading…and it’s also highly addicting. So what do the sites that Twitter addicts visit say about the future of the web, and how does this compare to the two more traditional social web players?

Comparing the three, some really compelling trends are visible. While it’s not shocking that sites like twhirl.org (a site that offers “tweet” enabling software) rise to the top of the list, some of the others show that these users are most interested in socializing.

• MySpace addicts are somewhat vain – focusing heavily on establishing and fine tuning their online personas by customization of their personal profiles
• Facebook addicts focus more on engagement – interacting with applications, music and people both on and off the platform
• Twitter addicts are most interested in fostering communication and exploration – sites that allow a user to understand what their contacts are doing, provide a platform for content discovery and encourage users to actively participate are the most likely places to find hardcore twitterers.

* In this analysis Facebook and MySpace addicts were defined as any user who logged into either site at least 21 days in February. Twitter addicts were defined as anyone who went to their twitter home page at least 10 times in a month. The less stringent qualifications for Twitter addicts was necessary because of the multiple channels used to access the site (mobile, desktop applications).