Statistics | Media Culpa

Gangnam Style by PSY just reached 1 billion views

Seoul sensation PSY and his viral mega-hit Gangnam Style just reached 1 billion views on Youtube. That is the first time in history that a piece of visual content reaches that many views.

The K-pop video was uploaded on July 15 and quickly reached an international mass audience. It only took 51 days for the video to reach 100 million views, 5 days faster than Justin Bieber’s “Baby”, which took 56 days to reach that many views. “Baby” is currently the second most viewed video on Youtube with 813 million views.

If everyone that viewed the 4 min 13 seconds long video watched it to the end (which of course some didn’t) that would mean that we’ve spent 253 billion seconds on Gangnam Style, or 8,022 years.

If watched in sequence, you would have to start in the year 6010 BC and watch every single minute up til today to rack up the total time the video has been watched.

5 years on Twitter – infographic

Apparently I joined Twitter five years ago today, on Nov 14, 2007. It’s been a fascinating development and back then I couldn’t envision how important Twitter would grow and how many followers I could gain in these years. In fact, 8 months earlier, in March 2007, I mentioned Twitter for the first time on this blog and my first impressions were all but positive. Here is my first comment about Twitter:

“I’m clearly totally out of fashion when I say that I have no desire to try out the new mega hype Twitter.”

At least, I have no problem admitting I was wrong. Today, Twitter is one of my most important news sources and tools for building relationships online. That said, here is a short infographic of my first five years on Twitter, courtesy of Visual.ly and Amstel Beer (!). Click on the image for a larger version.

Footnote: The detailed data for the infographic probably is only for the last 12 monts, so there is a possibility that other tweets and dates have generated more engagement. I am @kullin on Twitter, by the way.

Infographic: Barack Obama vs Mitt Romney on Twitter

The 2012 U.S. presidential election is a tight race with both candidates getting about the same amount of votes in recent election polls. During the election race, social media has played a very important role. Here is a quick infographic outlining the Twitter battle between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Obama has ten times as many followers but Romney has more mentions per tweet.

Click on the image for a larger version or here for a pdf.

Cristiano Ronaldo reaches 50 million fans on Facebook

Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo has quite a fan base. On Twitter, he has close to 14 million followers and on the Chinese equivalent Sina Weibo, he has 9 million followers. But it is on Facebook that the largest number of fans are connected to Real Madrid’s forward. He has now reached 50 million fans on Facebook, beating rival Leo Messi of FC Barcelona with more than 11 million.

Impressive as that is, it still doesn’t put Ronaldo in the top ten of most liked Facebook pages. The top ten according to Fanpagelist.com are:

Facebook – 79 million
Texas Holdem Poker – 66 million
YouTube – 64 million
Rihanna – 62 million
Eminem – 62 million
The Simpsons – 55 million
Shakira – 55 million
Lady Gaga – 53 million
Coca-Cola – 53 million
Michael Jackson – 52 million

The most retweeted tweet of all time

Yesterday, the NFL reached an agreement with the NFL Referees Association to end an ongoing lockout. Before that agreement was reached, temporary referees were used during the start of the season. But some calls by replacement referees were criticized. After one such questionable decision, Green Bay Packers lost a game on Monday evening, which lead Packers’ guard T.J. Lang to tweet this message.

This tweet has now become one of the most retweeted tweets of all time, currently at close to 100,000 retweets. One older tweet that had thousands of retweets, is the same-sex marriage tweet by Barack Obama that has been retweeted more than 61,000 times. (Update: I forgot about Justin Bieber. Never forget Bieber. As you see below, one of his tweets has 120k RTs).

However, the tweet that is still the most retweeted is this one by Justin Bieber with 120,000 retweets (found via Buzzfeed):