It’s already acknowledged that recent incidents in Charlie Sheen’s life and his subsequent barrage of interviews have created an online feeding frenzy. Indeed, Sheen has won the Guinness World Record for fastest time to reach one million followers on Twitter – he had gained over 100,000 followers without publishing a single tweet. On the same day, Tuesday, March 1st, that Charlie Sheen joined Twitter, ‘charlie sheen twitter’ ranked 10th among all of the search terms driving traffic to Twitter.com.
But who is gaining from Sheen’s media maelstrom? Searches for “Sheen” and variations of “Sheen” sharply increased on Monday and Tuesday of this week. On Monday, web-users were searching for his Today Show interview, information about his former wives and Sheen news in general. By Tuesday, web-users’ interest became more targeted and web-users searched for Sheen’s specific interviews on the “Today Show” and “20/20″ and variations also started to include “tmz” and “twitter” along with “goddesses” and “girlfriends”.

On Monday (2/28), The Today Show’s interview with Mr. Sheen caused a 236% increase in its website’s share of visits in comparison to the previous Monday (2/21). Searches for ‘charlie sheen’ and ‘charlie sheen interview’ ranked 2nd and 3rd on Monday behind ‘today show’ among the search terms driving traffic to the Today Show’s website. Piers Morgan’s CNN blog had a 67% increase in market share of visits on the day of the first interview (2/28), but received its greatest bump on Tuesday (+133% week-to-week), as details spread & additional interviews took place.
TMZ has also been one the most popular beneficiaries of Sheen news, with a nice uptick in market share on Monday and Tuesday of this week; the site’s growth on 2/24 and 2/21 were partly due to the “Sheenanigans”, but also thanks to pictures of Justin Beiber’s new haircut and appearance at the Vanity Fair Oscar party with Selena Gomez.

New websites have also been popping up such as the random Charlie Sheen random quote generator, LivetheSheenDream along with Sheen-related merchandise such as posters and t-shirts featuring popular quotes like ‘winning’. It seems that where there is a Sheen-related video to watch, or updates & tweets to read, web-users are sure to follow.
Thanks to Margot Bonner, Analyst with our Custom Data & Analytics team for helping with today’s blog post.