The chances are you have heard of Susan Boyle, the Scottish singer featured on Britain’s Got Talent recently. If you’re outside of the UK then you probably found out about this lady via the Internet. Susan Boyle once again shows the power of viral video.
Susan Boyle – International Star
Susan Boyle is a phenomenon that shows no sign of disappearing anytime soon. While her original performance on the British television show, Britain’s Got Talent, was watched by a few million people enjoying a bit of Saturday night TV, videos featuring Boyle have now gone global and viral.
Below is the video that started it all, showing Boyle singing I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miserables, embeddable thanks to MySpace. The YouTube version has ‘Embedded Disabled By Request’ after ITV, the makers of Britain’s Got Talent, obviously decided it didn’t want to share the clip without certain restrictions being put in place.
Susan Boyle – I Dreamed A Dream
Approaching Avril
At the time of writing, the above clip on YouTube has garnered over 32 million views, and the total is rising by the hour. Although it has a long way to go before coming close to overtaking the likes of The Evolution of Dance starring Judson Laipply or the video for Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend, one online video tracking company claims it has a chance.
Visible Measures has a database of 100 million online videos but the Susan Boyle phenomenon has made it pay special attention to tracking videos featuring the amateur singer found by Simon Cowell and company. The company claims Susan Boyle is producing “historic numbers”.
Number Crunching
In a blog post, Visible Measures claims that there are currently 850 videos about or starring Susan Boyle online. These include the original clip of her appearing on the show, the recording of her singing for a charity album almost ten years ago, and various interviews and tribute videos.
The videos, as a whole, have so far generated over 100 million views and 290,000 comments. This last weekend has seen the number shoot up as more and more people venture online to find out what all the fuss is about. On Friday the views stood at 47.7 million, on Saturday 63.3, and on Sunday 85.2 million. Now they’re at 103 million and counting.
Conclusions
These numbers are amazing and once again show the true power of viral video. What was once a humble Scottish virgin in need of a good makeover is now a truly worldwide star most of us would recognize in the street. And it’s all thanks to online video and its nature for being shared and spreading around the Web.
