How the Big Brother Naija hashtag broke record on Twitter

The ending of Big Brother Naija may have been the perfect climax the organisers expected with Efe Ejeba the favourite for most of the viewers emerging the winner of the coveted N25 million cash prize.

But while most people stayed glued to their cable television watching every episode of the reality TV show, one twitter user Bukola Ogunyemi, a media expert and chief operating officer at Alpha Reach was following the show’s analytics on the social network.

Efe Ejeba, an upcoming rap artist was announced winner of the 2017 Big Brother Naija ‘See Goobe’ reality TV show after raking in 57.61 percent of the total votes.

As the BBNaija fan world across the internet went wild with joy on Efe’s emergence, Ogunyemi was sharing his two weeks findings from following the show’s hashtag, #BBNaija on his verified Twitter handle.

The numbers we must quickly say are very impressive.

@zebbook explained that limiting the analytics data to the last two weeks was in order to focus on the final contenders.

In the two weeks he began surveying #BBNaija, his findings showed it was used a total of 1,058,900 times, representing an average of 1,500 tweets per minute. 59 percent of active users were female – no surprises there.

The most significant milestone perhaps took place on Sunday April 2, 2017, when #BBNaija in @zebbook’s words “took over the world”. The hashtag was used in over 100 cities, all continents, within two minutes.

While speaking to BusinessDay later, @zebbook said “That was totally unexpected and hugely significant. #BBNaija is supposed to be a reality TV show localised for the Nigerian audience, through DSTv. But the hashtag was mentioned in places like China, Colombia, India and more than 20 states in the US.”

He further stated that in terms of popularity the only hashtags that originated from Nigeria that had such wide spread across the world were the #2015Elections and #BringBackOurGirls.

From the hashtag numbers, #BBNaija is the most talked about show on social media in Nigeria ever and Africa.

But it should be noted that the numbers were not so great from the beginning. @zebbook told BusinessDay that the show had a slow start, “pulling between 5,000 – 10,000 tweets per day.”

If anything the housemates were the rallying ground for the organisers, particularly the first set of couples, Tboss and Miyonse, Gifty and Soma, then Bisola and TTT.

“These housemates dominated the conversation in the first 4 weeks of the show,” @zebbook told BusinessDay.

The major drivers for the show’s popularity include content and social media connectivity. With time many viewers were able to find housemates whose stories resonated with their realities. As the found those connectivity, they spread the word. The ability to connect, according to @zebbook, was therefore mostly responsible for the growth in interest from people both in Nigeria and in diaspora.

The show’s global popularity may have justified the organisers’ decision to take it to South Africa instead of Nigeria.

“Having the show in South Africa definitely pulled the South and East African audiences in. But conversations were driven mostly by Nigerians. The organisers, they have managed to bring a number of young talented Nigerians into limelight and can be proud of that,” @zebbook said.