As midday struck on Sunday thousands of Australian backyards, living rooms, businesses, buses and cars began to fill with the sounds of a grand competition.
Ears strained and anticipation mounted, what would be the 100 hottest songs of all time? Would it be Led Zeppelin, or Nirvana? Only time would tell and only a few hours to go where all would be revealed.
Triple J rattled off each name in succession, simultaneously updating the countdown on their Facebook page with its 100,000+ fans, on Twitter via the @triplej account and on their own Countdown website.
Triple J listeners responded to every announcement, they joined in the chorus to rejoice, vilify and otherwise comment on the rights of each song to be in the Hottest 100 of all time. They Tweeted, updated Facebook and posted on the Triple J guestbook.
Twitter fans were sure to use the #hottest100 hashtag; by following the hashtag using a Twitter Search client everyone can be part of and follow the same conversation.
The excitement grew as the countdown continued and internet chatter increased with every song played. The listeners made bets with their friends on the musical masterpiece that would take out the top spot.
As the Hunters & Collectors song Throw Your Arms Around Me began to play at position 23, the somewhat scratchy recording left many in the crowd dismayed. It was not the studio version they expected and they voiced their concerns via Twitter:
Presenter Richard Kingsmill responded to Twitter conversation live on air and explained that they chose the 1984 single version of Throw Your Arms Around Me instead of the album version which made the song so popular:
“It was the original version … which a lot of us still feel has the magic of the song within it, even though it’s a rudimentary recording,” said Kingsmill.
It provided confirmation that the presenters were actually listening and engaging with the user-generated feedback. It was no longer a one way event – it became a conversation.
A case of mistaken identity
Triple J fed the conversation on twitter asking people to help them break into the trending topics (the most popular keywords on Twitter at any time):
People began to retweet the message, helping it to grow virally across the micro blogging network.
This led listeners to start questioning why it had not appeared in the Twitter rending topics under the #hottest100 hashtag. A quick check of hashtags.org showed that the term was indeed trending at number two, in spite of its absence on Twitter.com and it was rising fast.
Nothing showed up despite the increasing number of tweets that flooded in. However, when Australian hip-hop group Hilltop Hoods' The Nosebleed Section debuted at number 17 a flurry of comments appeared on the Facebook fan page and the Triple J website. This particular chart introduction finally introduced the first official mention of the Hottest 100 onto Twitter, yet the officially sanctioned tag was still notably absent.
Only a week after being publicly embarrassed by internet pranksters from the notorious 4Chan web forum, Twitter had tightened security by blocking many keywords from the trending topics. #hottest100 ,with a salacious sounding name, was caught in the trap and was thus blocked from the Twitter homepage. The open nature of twitter allows other tools such as hashtags.org and twitscoop.com to track what is really happening on the network. As both of these services confirmed, the hashtage #hottest100 was popular as shown by the peak performance, appearing in 1.84% of all tweets.
Imagine an instant response
Imagine by John Lennon flowed through the airwaves and wires, which caused listeners' around Australia and beyond to reminisce and reflect. When the song finished presenter John Kingsmill announced the exciting news: “Yoko Ono personally ... this is truth ... she’s actually given us permission to use Imagine on the upcoming CD set”
Kingsmill continued to explain that Yoko Ono rarely allows Imagine to be used in compilations and Twitter users responded to the exciting news within seconds:
A coherent stream of thoughts
Tweets were posted at an impressive rate of over one per second, every tweet a thought which was then broadcast across the service, when combined they created a collective consciousness.
The tweets flew by too fast to be dwelled upon, they become nameless. They instead merge into one heaving mass of opinion.
Joy Division, at number four flows on to Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah at number 3. Twitter StreamGraphs , one of the many Twitter based tools, allows us to visualise this ebb and flow of commentary. The chart below provides a snapshot of the listening audience at that moment, as they responded to the sounds streaming from their stereos.
The Live Stream
At this stage, the only effective way keep track was by using Twitterfall to display a live search of the #hottest100 hashtag. Twitter sets itself apart in the ability to be truly real time. The experience can only be described as mesmerising.
It’s a waterfall of information as Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name Of rampaged in at number two. This left only one song on top – Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, which was crowned the hottest song of all time, as voted by Triple J listeners.
The following video gives you an idea of what it was like following a broadcast event using Twitterfall.com. (Please be warned, the recording software had a few glitches and the audio quality is very poor)
The Hottest 100 of All Time was a solid example of how social media can be successfully integrated into a live event.
Triple J provided many ways to access the event, which was essentially held of a large distributed network. It was accessible via:
-
117 FM radio transmitters in Australia
-
Via a live internet stream anywhere in the world
Triple J also provided numerous points of contact for listeners to comment and engage in the broadcast including:
-
Telephone
-
SMS
-
Triple J live 'Countdown' website with associated guestbook.
-
Triple J Facebook Fan page (with over 110,000 fans)
-
Triple J Twitter account (with over 17,000 fans)
-
The official #hottest100 hashtag
While these features alone do not set Triple J apart, the way in which the presenters responded and encouraged the audience to use these tools was inspiring. It was a truly integrated approach, allowing fans to communicate in whatever format they desired and allowing the hosts to feel the pulse of a disparate and scattered audience. While radio stations have long used the telephones, SMS and to a lesser extent, the internet to interact, the real time nature of Twitter in particular adds a whole new dimension.
No longer must the viewer remain passive and wait for presenters to relay selected and edited information. Instead, anyone with access to a computer and a few Twitter tools can tap into the stream and experience richer live. It’s a truly connected experience, and one that can be analysed in ways that were simply not possible only a few short years ago.
