The following chart shows the percent of all blogs which mentioned the Academy Awards and the writer’s strike. The January 22nd spike for the Academy Awards was prompted by this year’s nominations announcement coupled with concerns that the writer’s strike would prevent the show from going on. After the announcement on February 13th that the writer’s strike was over, consumer discussion peaked largely driven by excitement for the Sunday, February 24th telecast. 

Online Audience

Traffic to the three major Oscar Web sites (oscar.movies.yahoo.com, oscar.com and oscars.org) reached 1.8 million unique visitors on the day of the awards ceremony last year according to Nielsen Online. The next day, the combined Web traffic to these sites increased 81 percent to 3.3 million. Weekly unique visitors to these three Web sites grew 183 percent in the week ending in Oscar night, up to 2.6 million from 905,000 the week before.

In 2007 Oscar.com grew 88 percent year over year, from an Oscar week unique audience of 720,000 to 1.4 million. The recent writers’ strike left the Oscars ceremony in doubt for several months, perhaps resulting in less Web traffic to the sites of Oscar-nominated films. The combined traffic to the Web sites of the major Oscar contenders was 831,000 unique visitors in January 2008 compared with 993,000 in January 2007.

As the 2008 presidential election approaches, buzz around politics heats up. Conversations are largely driven by concerns of the economy’s path to recession. The political race in the blogosphere is neck and neck among front runners Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Consumers realize the importance each political candidate has on the future of our economy and flock to the web to express concerns.

Beef Recall

Food safety is a hot topic for consumers and to no surprise, the recent beef recall ignited online conversations as consumer express concerns about health and animal cruelty. Some consumers are anticipating the response of presidential candidates, while others plan to boycott the meat industry and turn to a vegetarian lifestyle.