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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK
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Daniel Hannan: has social media finally gone political in the UK?
March 31, 2009
It is generally accepted that his campaign team’s use of social media contributed to Barack Obama’s victory in last year’s American presidential election. But over on this side of the pond, politicians have been much slower to grasp the nettle and really exploit the benefits of Internet. Last year’s London Mayoral election – widely tipped to be the UK’s first ‘Facebook election’ – was a real let down in terms of online campaigning. There were a few YouTube clips and the candidates set up Facebook groups, but even Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone (both amongst the most recognized politicians in the UK) could only attract a few thousand followers on the social network.
However, maybe all that will change following the success of Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan, who has shot to fame after posting a speech he gave to the European parliament on YouTube. The clip has so far racked up 1.8 million views on the video sharing service and attracted 11,000 comments. The popularity of the video means that Mr. Hannan, who is also a columnist for the Daily Telegraph, was the most searched for politician in the UK last week. As the chart below illustrates, there were 4 times as many searches for ‘daniel hannan’ than ‘barack obama’, 12 times as many as for ‘david cameron’ (his party leader), and 7 times the number for ‘gordon brown’.
Last week 22.5% of people searching for ‘daniel hannan’ ended up at YouTube, while a further 25.7% went a Telegraph property (it was the most popular search term sending traffic to Telegraph Blogs). News sites in general did well from the story, as the table below illustrates. In total, 45.9% of people searching for ‘daniel hannan’ ended up at a News and Media website.
Out of the 318,000 distinct search terms sending UK Internet traffic to YouTube last week, ‘daniel hannan’ ranked 49th, and was the 24th most popular non-branded term. Mr Hannan was also the fourth highest ranking person sending search traffic to the site. However, the list of people above him - Jade Goody, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga - implies that it might be a while before politicians overtake celebrities as social media traffic drivers.
Posted by Robin Goad at 09:00 AM
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In Categories Blogs | Celebrities | News and Media | Politics | Search | Social networks | Video
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Comments
The Hannan thing is a bit of a sideshow although its interesting how his internet popularity contributed to MSM covering his outburst in greater detail.
Politics on the internet has changed a lot in only a few months. The Obama win has led so many politicians to either a) genuinely want to learn more or b) say I don't understand it BUT I WANT ONE!
Posted by Mark Hanson | March 31, 2009 01:23 PM
Don't get carried away by the whole Hannan thing.
His video was the lucky beneficiary of prominent promotion by the Drudge Report... and that only happened because Gordon Brown was en route to the US. (Presumably Hitwise has data which might show the extent of the direct clickthroughs?)
Hannan was then interviewed, at length, on Fox News TV in the States, with interviewer Neil Cavuto effectively heralding him as the next Prime Minister (which, from an entirely practical viewpoint, is a total impossibility, but never mind, eh). So it can't exactly be a surprise that this might have generated some 'who the heck is this guy?' googling.
Posted by Simon Dickson | March 31, 2009 11:49 AM