MANDELA SHARES GOOGLE ‘ZEITGEIST’ STAGE WITH PISTORIUS

NELSON Mandela and Oscar Pistorius have, unsurprisingly, topped the list of the year’s most popular Google search terms in South Africa.

Google South Africa released its “year-end zeitgeist” on Tuesday, with data on the top trending and most searched terms in the country.

These lists, released annually for the past 12 years, “give us insight into the curiosities that captured the world’s attention in 2013″, said Julie Taylor, head of communications at Google SA.

Google creates the lists through its Google Trends feature, which measures the volume of searches around terms and topics, as well as other internal measurements and aggregations.

“Trending searches” measures the terms that had the highest amount of web traffic at a specific time throughout the year, while “most searched” ranks terms by volume of searches.

Unsurprisingly, former president Mandela, who died in Johannesburg on December 5, topped all of the overall lists, followed by Olympic runner Pistorius, accused of murdering his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, who also featured prominently on many of the lists.

Former president Nelson Mandela chats with Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown (not pictured) during a meeting at his hotel in central London, in this June 24 2008 file photo. (Picture: REUTERS)

Vuyo Mbuli, the SABC radio and television presenter who died in June of a pulmonary embolism, came at least fourth on the lists of trending overall searches, trending people and trending men. His wife came in second on trending South African women.

When it came to trending politicians, academic and activist Mamphela Ramphele came first, followed by young Democratic Alliance stars Mmusi Maimane and Lindiwe Mazibuko.

For most searched, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema was sandwiched between President Jacob Zuma and former president Thabo Mbeki.

The events that captured the attention of the country ranged from Hollywood actor Paul Walker’s car-crash death to the Boston marathon bombing and Reeva Steenkamp’s funeral. Mandela was first in this category.

Android’s recent BBM addition was at the top of technology-related searches, and dance act Swedish House Mafia topped the trending music search list.

The launching of Mr Malema’s EFF was the most widely searched political event, followed by the Red October marches and the annual budget speech by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan.

The word that people seemed to be the most confused about was the American term “twerk”. It topped the “how to” and “what is” lists.

Through Google Trends, users can create their own lists based on whatever criteria they deem most important. Google collects a database of information about search trends that users can access to find out what is most popular on the internet.

Ms Taylor described the lists as simply “what gadgets and gizmos were trending, to what styles were hot, to which athletes inspired us…. Zeitgeist showcases what captured the world’s attention this year through the lens of Google Search.”

*featured on the Business Day website on 12/17/13

MANDELA TRIBUTE VIDEOS WATCHED BY MILLIONS

FOLLOWING up on its 2013 top 10 video popularity lists released on Wednesday, YouTube on Thursday released a list of the most watched Nelson Mandela-related videos of the year.

The list is populated entirely by tributes, many of which came from American news organisations such as The New York Times, CNN and PBS. It also features poetry and songs, some containing words from Mandela himself, others simply dedicated to him.

But the most watched video was U2’s Ordinary Love, from the soundtrack of the recently released biopic Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. The film was released only a few weeks before Mandela’s death and the song was featured prominently in promoting it.

U2 lead singer Bono attended the national memorial service for Mandela at the FNB Stadium in Johannesburg on Tuesday.

A still from a video showing US President Barack Obama speaking from the White House soon after the death of Nelson Mandela last week. (Business Day)

The South African Rugby Association had the 10th most views with its tribute, which featuredMandela speaking about rugby. The association wrote that it wanted the video to show “what a massive impact former president Nelson Mandela had on the world, South Africa and rugby in particular”.

US President Barack Obama made the list with his initial reaction to Mandela’s death from the White House press room.

South African retailer Woolworths was in fourth place with its moving video of the Soweto Gospel Choir posing as Parkview store employees before breaking into a song dedicated to Mandela.

The Nelson Mandela Centre for Memory also made it, with a video featuring short messages from a variety of world leaders, including the Dali Lama, former US president Bill Clinton, Richard Branson and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu. The video implores viewers to do something worthwhile for someone else on July 18, International Nelson Mandela Day.

After U2, the next most popular video was a poem by Maya Angelou, released by the official account of the US State Department on behalf of the American people.

The poem, titled His Day Was Done, is recited by Dr Angelou against the backdrop of memorable scenes from Mandela’s life.

She recounts the profound effect Mandela had on oppressed people in the US and across the world, finishing the poem with: “We will not forget you, we will not dishonour you, we will remember and be glad that you lived among us, that you taught us, and that you loved us, all.”

*featured on the Business Day Website on 12/12/13

CAR CRASH, COMEDY TOP LIST OF SA’S YOUTUBE FAVOURITES

AS THE year draws to a close, YouTube has released its lists of the top videos watched in South Africa in 2013.

RUN, BRYAN, RUN: Bryan Habana races a plane in one of South Africa's most popular YouTube videos in 2013. (Business Day)

The video sharing website said on Wednesday that 100 hours of video were uploaded onto the site every minute and more than 6-billion hours of video were watched each month — almost an hour for every person on Earth.

When it comes to what makes a video go “viral”, Google SA head of communication Julie Taylor says: “There’s no exact formula, but popular videos tend to have three key characteristics. They’re entertaining or informative in some way, they’re something that you want to share with other people, and they come from a channel with more videos like it.”

For South Africa, the video with the most views showed a truck accident in Pinetown, KwaZulu-Natal, that killed 22 people in September. A mounted camera on a company car filmed the footage, which shocked the country and attracted almost 1-million views.

The rest of the list was a mix of promotional videos (Bryan Habana racing a British Airways plane, Halls’ hip-hop-themed “Klein Kimmie” ad and Dove’s “Real Beauty” sketch), news reports (theWestgate Mall attack in Kenya, bike-riding for children), animal videos (National Geographic’s “Jaguar attacks crocodile”) and comedy (Ylvis’s novelty music single What Does the Fox Say?, “How animals eat their food” and “7-year-old steals iPhone”).

The top ads came from Volkswagen, WeChat with Lionel Messi, KFC, Beacon Allsorts and Dove (in first place).

Surprisingly, the top YouTube channel was run by Swedish gaming comic PewDiePie. American and Canadian channels rounded out the list, with The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The X-Factor, Jenna Marbles and Just for Laughs finishing the top five.

When it came to music videos, Miley Cyrus ruled, coming in first and second with her two hit songs Wrecking Ball and We Can’t Stop. Robin Thicke’s worldwide smash Blurred Lines came in fifth after Katy Perry and PSY.

YouTube determines the list and what is trending through an aggregate of views, shares, likes and comments.

“You don’t just watch videos — you share, like, make responses and more,” Ms Taylor said. “We looked at the many ways you interact with videos to identify the top trending videos that everybody was talking about in 2013.”

It is the fifth year that YouTube has compile these lists for countries all over the world. More than 80% of YouTube’s traffic come from outside the US at this point.

Mandela dominates online conversation

Former president Nelson Mandela. (SUNDAY TIMES)

In the same vein, online mentions of Nelson Mandela skyrocketed after his death in Johannesburg last Thursday, dominating online conversations in most countries with widespread internet access.

Reseach provider BrandsEye recorded almost 5-million mentions related to Mandela in the 24 hours after President Jacob Zuma announced his death. By December 6, that number had swelled to more than 11.5-million mentions, with people sharing condolences, remembrances, quotes and images of the former president.

The numbers kept up through the weekend, with more users commenting on the news coverage of his death as well as the funeral arrangements.

His official memorial service at the FNB Stadium on Tuesday bumped the number of mentions back up to their previously high levels. US President Barack Obama also saw a lion’s share of mentions, mostly concerning his speech, the now infamous “selfie” with the British and Danish prime ministers, and his handshake with Cuba’s Raul Castro.

In terms of location, South Africa led the online conversation when the news first hit. But over the next six days, the US took over with more than 12% of all internet mentions related to Mandela. South Africa still accounts for almost 7% of all mentions, and Nigeria came in as the country with the next biggest share.

The number is expected to continue steadily growing again as Mandela lies in state in Pretoria this week ahead of his burial in Qunu in the Eastern Cape on Sunday.

*featured on Business Day’s website on 12/11/13