Kolaveri Di Social Analytics Project Overview

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The use of social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, among the Internet users has been exponentially increasing in the recent years. The users in social media platforms form a kind of “networks” wherein they are connected with one another directly or indirectly. The insights that these social networks give are very valuable especially to marketers: the word of mouth (WOM) spread faster than other traditional marketing activities, and the social media metrics (such as number of followers, or impression score) can easily determine the effectiveness of a marketing activity.

This project aims to discuss the impact of Twitter and its influencers in forming networks among the users, under a common topic. The project will be mainly focused on a Tamil song, entitled Why This Kolaveri Di (Tamil: வொய் திஸ் கொலவெறி டி, Why This Murderous Rage, Girl?) that went viral in 2011 across different social media platforms. We aim to evaluate the Twitter dataset related to Kolaveri Di, in order to find out why and how the video went viral and to suggest the implications of such phenomenon with marketing insights.

Why This Kolaveri Di was a soundtrack from the upcoming Tamil movie 3, and was written and sung by an award winning actor Dhanush. The song was known for its quirky use of Tanglish (Tamil + English) lyrics, with catchy beats and melody. The video of the song was officially released on YouTube on November 16, 2011, and upon release the hashtag #kolaveri topped in Twitter in Indian trends by November 21, 2011.

The Impact-u

Within a week, the video garnered more than 1.3 million views on YouTube, still trending top in India on Twitter. By end of November, the views increased to 10 million. For more statistics, see below:

It was accoladed with gold medal for the most popular video, silver medal for trending by YouTube, and was named best video song of 2011 by CNN in the end of the year.

The main objective of this project is to find out why and how the video went viral. To further supplement, below is the list of questions to be explored throughout the project.

1. Why did the video go viral?

a. What are the factors that made Kolaveri Di go viral?

b. What are the other general factors (or triggers) that can make any content go viral on social media sites?

c. Are there any networks formed among the users? What are some characteristics of the networks formed? Is it directional or un-directional? Are the nodes involved at individual level or corporate level?

2. Who are the influencers?

a. Define the influencers in both marketing and analytics perspective.

i. What are the attributes that an influencer should possess?

b. Identify the influencers in the Kolaveri Di network.

i. What are their characteristics like?

ii. Profile them.

iii. Are the influencers the same in different time periods?

3. What implications does this project have?

a) How do we engage/incentivize the influencers in social media marketing?

b) Make any other feasible recommendations for another video to be successful/go viral in Twitter.

Supervisor: Prof. Seema Chokshi

Instructor: Mr. Daniel Koh

Sponsor: Prof. Srinivas Reddy

Students: Jaehyun Lee & Chan Weiyin