Thursday, May 12, 2011

The Pacquiao-Mosley Effect on Wikipedia

I actually didn't even watch the Pacquiao-Mosley fight on the day itself-- first time I missed a Pacquiao fight in at least five years.

Anyway, here are a bunch of interesting graphs showing the spike in Wikipedia page views for the articles related to the fight. All of these graphs are from the Wikipedia article traffic statistics tool by Henrik.

Manny Pacquiao vs. Shane Mosley - The main article for the fight got 62k views on the big day.

Manny Pacquiao - Pacquiao got 260k hits. His Wikipedia article, I mean. The man himself took significantly less hits that day.

Shane Mosley - Mosley's article got 122k views, less than half that of Pacquiao.

Boxing - Even the article for the sport of boxing itself received 3x the usual number of page views.

Sarangani - The province where Pacquiao serves as congressman got around 10x the normal number of page views.

General Santos City - Pacquiao's home town. He's no longer introduced as being from General Santos, but the page still got around 6x the usual number of views.

Mama Said Knock You Out - Shane Mosley's entrance song got over 3x the usual number of page views that day.

Eye of the Tiger - Manny Pacquiao's entrance song got 10x the usual number of page views.

Survivor (band) - The band that made "Eye of the Tiger" a hit in 1982 also got around 10x the usual number of page views.
Jimi Jamison - The lead singer of Survivor from 1984-1989 and 2000-2006 performed "Eye of the Tiger" and walked with Pacquiao as he entered the arena. He went from virtually unknown to getting 10k views that day, a 100x increase.

Lupang Hinirang - Even the Philippine national anthem got 5x the usual number of views that day.

Jimmy Lennon Jr. - Showtime's ring announcer for the fight got a massive increase in page views.

Michael Buffer - HBO's usual ring announcer was not a participant in this fight at all, but still got 7x his usual number of page views, probably from people wondering what happened to him.

Antonio Margarito - Pacquiao's last opponent got 10x the usual number of views on fight day.
Juan Manuel Marquez - Pacquiao's old nemesis and likely next opponent.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Obama's Big Week

President Obama seems to be everywhere and doing everything at once lately. A busy schedule this past week:
  • Wednesday: Release original birth certificate, scold critics and conspiracy theorists for wasting everyone's time, expose Donald Trump as the real fraud. "We've got bigger problems to solve".
  • Friday: Travel to Alabama to console victims of the America's deadliest tornado outbreak in the past 80 years.
  • Saturday: Perform 20 minute monologue at the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner, roasting political opponents right to their faces.
  • Sunday: Kill Osama bin Laden.
At this rate he may very well... umm... I'm trying to think of a hyperbole to use here, but killing Osama bin Laden is just about the best thing that a US president could ever, ever do.