So, in the last 48 hours [beginning 11/23/2011] there has been a Bollywood song that has caught fancy on the net and has seen 2.2 million downloads on YouTube. It is called Kolaveri Di - a very catchy tune, you may like it too :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR12Z8f1Dh8

YouTube numbers at 11.30AM PST on 11/23/11

Youtube Statistics

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wanted to do a research on the genesis of this going viral.

I started by going into Trackur (a free account) got some numbers.  The below results were for Nov 15-Nov 22. There were NO mentions of Kolaveri on 15th Nov or prior. But Trackur returned 25 results for Nov 16 – Nov 22.

 

Trackur-1

 

But check this out: Today alone (11/23 - 12 Noon)

 

Trackur-2

 

 

 

 SocialMention 

I then moved on to checking data in www.socialmention.com and this is what I found:

1. In the Last Month there have been a total of 389 mentions and average 1 minute per mention.

SocialMention-1

 

SocialMention-2

 

 

Most of the mentions have happened in the last day (269)

The above results were at 10AM today (11/23/11)

 SocialMention-3

 

 

SocialMention-4

The above results were 12 Noon today (11/23). Note how quickly the numbers have changed in the last 2 hours. The mentions are now happening at a rate of 11 seconds down from 52 seconds (5 times faster)

 SocialMention-5

This is a free tool and can be used to track the current state of "mentions" about the keyword.