hot trends: Harry Potter hotter than iPhone on release day? (revised)
Harry Potter’s 7th book made it nicely on google Hot Trends on its day of release . Being the last in the series, and having the mystery surrounding this worldwide hero – made it a real hot search (most common searches were: “does Harry Potter die”, “Harry Potter ending” – reaching number 15 out of 100 searches in the USA – see graph 1). The way I see it, from a trends and communication perspective – it did help Harry Potter to be leaked to the net (intentionally??? ).
I was curious enough to try compare Harry Potter to iPhone on its released day.
Turns out that one of the most powerful technology trends is not much ahead (search wise) culture symbols and cross age idols as Harry Potter. (iPhone reached number 10 30 on USA Hot Trends in the day of its release, see graph 2).
In analogy to Harry – Imagine this hot trend search: will iphone die?
graph 1: google hot trends: harry potter on release day
graph 2: google hot trends: iPhone on release day
Tweet This Post 
Plurk This Post 
Buzz This Post 
Delicious 
Digg This Post 
Ping This Post 
Reddit 
Stumble This Post
![[Valid RSS]](http://www.trendsspotting.com/blog/wp-content/images/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed")
July 21st, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Hey Tali,
First of all, I really like what you’re writing – great job!
Second, I was wondering why you didn’t count the query “iphone sales” (no. 10) on the iphone launch day?
July 21st, 2007 at 4:08 pm
I usually find your analysis spot-on, but this one is a bit misleading. Google Trends measures sudden changes in search volume(acceleration), not search volume itself. While Harry Potter buzz has burst onto the web quickly in the past month or so, the iPhone buzz has been building steadily for at least the past year, reaching a crescendo in the months leading up to its release. I’m confident that, in absolute search volume, the iPhone outranks Harry Potter by far- although, obviously, more copies of Harry Potter were sold than iPhones.
July 22nd, 2007 at 1:28 am
“day of release effect”
google hot trends indicates the top-100 fastest-rising search trends for a certain day (“rather than showing the most popular searches overall, which would always be generic terms like “weather,” Hot Trends highlights searches that have sudden surges in popularity”.
You are probably right that iPhone had a longer buzz period before hand. But still in all aspects, a day of release should (and did) give rise to a search.
I was interested in the “day of release effect”: I wanted to find this relative buzz change on the one important day in the life of these brands.
thank you Olena for your correction, thank you Ilya for your remark.
December 29th, 2007 at 1:43 am
[…] Fun apart – 2007 we seemed enchanted by “potter mania”- on the release day itself Harry Potter was hot not less than iPhone […]