Blossom, Buttercup and Bubbles Rock Twitter! (Along With Lost Powerpuff Girl Lady Gaga)
A few notes about this week's Top 10 Most Tweeted Brands chart, a collaboration between Advertising Age and What the Trend:
- Sports brands dominate our list this week, with three of the seven spots going to, basically, balls in flight. The NFL and European soccer (football) loomed large, while the U.S. Open became a global Twitter obsession as well with a lot of help from Spanish tennis superstar Rafael Nadal.
- The MTV Video Music Awards top our list this week. The VMAs got a huge boost from the raw-meat-dress-wearing Lady Gaga as well as a couple of other pop-cultural icons who sort of became a meme of their own, namely ...
- Kanye West and Taylor Swift. Both performed at the VMAs, which caused endless speculation about potential backstage weirdness between them, given that Kanye notoriously interrupted Taylor's 2009 VMA acceptance speech. Kanye renewed the controversy by apologizing ("I'm sorry, Taylor") on Twitter recently, and now I just wish they'd hook up already and make adorable, arrogant babies together.
- You've gotta love the Twittersphere for its left-field obsessions. Supercute superheroes the Powerpuff Girls -- Blossom, Butttercup and Bubbles -- improbably make our Top 10 this week thanks to people tweeting their favorite memories of the iconic cartoon series in the wake of its airing on Indonesian TV. By the way, effective immediately, I'm launching a new meme -- #PowerpuffGaga -- in an attempt to spread the word that Lady Gaga was a Powerpuff Girl in her youth, but was cut from the team. It's true; I swear!
How is this chart made? See Notes, below.
| Trend | Peak Position This Week | Points | Crowdsourced Description | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | MTV VMAs | 1 | 11,793 | The MTV Video Music Awards aired on Sunday, September 12. Lady
Gaga accepted the award for Video of the Year (for "Bad Romance")
wearing a dress, shoes and purse made out of pieces of raw meat.
See whatthetrend.com for a complete list of
subtrends.
|
|
| 2 | NFL | 1 | 6,000 | Tweets about various teams, players and matches.
See whatthetrend.com for a complete list of
subtrends.
|
|
| 3 | Taylor Swift-Kanye West Controversy | 1 | 5,858 | People are beginning letter-style tweets (hence Dear Taylor
Swift) and penning their thoughts and reactions about her premiere
of her latest song, "Innocent," at the 2010 MTV VMAs. Kanye West
performed "Runaway" at the MTV VMAs.
Subtrends include: Dear Taylor Swift, #kanyewest, About Kanye
|
|
| 4 | Powerpuff Girls | 1 | 3,820 | People are tweeting about their favorite memories of the
Powerpuff Girls and their favorite characters from the show. It
originally started trending over the weekend because the show aired
on TRANS7, one of Indonesia's TV stations.
Subtrends include: Powerpuff
|
|
| 5 | 2 | 3,175 | Twitter is introducing a new, re-engineered Twitter.com website
design and rolling out its features to users over the next few
weeks.
Subtrends include: #newtwitter
|
||
| 6 | 1 | 2,529 | Google has launched a new Doodle on British and Irish platforms
to celebrate the 120th anniversary of mystery writer Agatha
Christie's birth. Google also just implemented various ajax
features, including instant search (as you type) and ajax paging.
Subtrends include: Agatha Christie, Google Instant, Agatha
|
||
| 7 | Soccer/Football | 1 | 2,287 | Tweets about various players, teams and matches.
See whatthetrend.com for a complete list of
subtrends.
|
|
| 8 | Restart | 1 | 2,153 | As a reaction to Restart trending, Twitter users are expressing
their dislike of the Brazilian band. "Cala Boca Coloridas" means
"Shut Up, Colorful Girls" in Portuguese. It refers to the mostly
teenage fans of Restart, which is part of a new "colourful rock"
movement whose fans wear gaudy clothes and weird haircuts.
Meanwhile, fans of the band are expressing their appreciation for
it and its members.
Subtrends include: Everybody Hates Restart, CALA BOCA COLORIDAS,
Everybody Loves Restart
|
|
| 9 | U.S. Open | 1 | 1,948 | Tweets about various players -- most notably Rafael Nadal --
and matches.
See whatthetrend.com for a complete list of
subtrends.
|
|
| 10 | Jonas Brothers | 1 | 1,953 | Nick Jonas turned 18 on Sept. 16.
Subtrends include: #happy18thbdaynickj
|
|
|
NOTES
1. WTT tracks the appearance of topics on the Twitter Trending Topics list and each week ranks the brands (broadly defined to include marketers, products and celebrity/entertainment brands) with the most cumulative staying power. Explanations of trends are solicited from WTT users, Wikipedia-style; a community-voting system is designed to highlight the best explanations while burying lame or prank explanations. 2. For the purposes of this chart, we collect and process data until 12 midnight EST on Thursday night before each Friday's publication. 3. We broadly define "brands" to include major marketers (e.g., Apple) and branded products (e.g., iPad), as well as celebrity and entertainment brands (e.g., Lady GaGa, American Idol). Ad Age works with WTT to consolidate multiple threads of brand chatter (e.g., Apple, iPad, iTampon, Apple Tablet) into one position on the chart when it's clear related Twitter conversations are basically all about the same topic, even if they use different keywords. 4. In WTT's proprietary trend-tracking system, points are awarded for both duration and rank in the top 10 trending topics on Twitter. The longer the duration, and the higher the overall rank, the more points are awarded. Measurements are taken in five-minute increments. 5. The crowdsourced trend explanations above are quoted as they appear on WTT, and therefore may have stylistic and grammatical quirks that don't adhere to normal Ad Age editorial standards. |
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For more information about What the Trend, visit the WTT FAQ. And check out WTT's Week in Review, compiled by its in-house editors and covering an expanded general list of Top 20 trends (including hashtag trends) here.
Simon Dumenco is the "Media Guy" media columnist for Advertising Age. You can follow him on Twitter @simondumenco.
