Susan Boyle has gone from obscurity to a household name in just one week. The
Washingon Post reports that Susan Boyle's audition on
Britain's Got Talent has now been seen over 66 million times. The
Post says this breaks a record for the number of views a video has been seen in a week. Over 30 million of the views are from the
YouTube video alone, which appears to be racing for the top of YouTube's most-viewed list.
According to Visible Measures, which tracks videos from YouTube, MySpace and other video-sharing sites, Boyle's audition has generated 66.3 million views. On YouTube alone, it's been viewed more than 30 million times. The 7-minute video that was posted on YouTube last Saturday and then widely circulated online easily eclipsed more high-profile videos that have been around for months. Tina Fey's impersonation of Sarah Palin has clocked in 34.2 million views, said the folks at Visible Measures, while President Obama's victory speech on election night has generated 18.5 million views. In less than a week, Boyle topped them.
But it's not just online video where Boyle, the unassuming woman from a tiny Scottish town, has dominated. Over the weekend, her Facebook fan page was flooded with comments, at some points adding hundreds of new members within a minute. The page listed 150,000 members on 1 p.m. Friday. It grew to 850,000 by 6 a.m. Sunday. Her Wikipedia entry has attracted nearly half a million page views since it was created last Sunday.
It's amazing how Susan's performance has viraled around the Internet so quickly. Services like Twitter and Facebook allow people to share information very quickly and this has really helped the number grow rapidly. Susan Boyle has also been on a number of talk shows including the CBS
Early Show (see
clip and CNN's Larry King, where she
covered Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On." Susan hasn't been on
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon yet but he
used her video in a skit for his show. These appearances plus people sharing the video on social networks really helped Susan Boyle obtain a massive number of views very quickly.
