Digital Trail

Another year and another wave of wannabes are put under the cultural microscope of The XFactor (and I love it!). Now we are down to the Finalists and the live performance shows, we will be party to three hours – every Saturday evening – of interaction on Twitter, Message Boards, Facebook and just shouting at the Television, in the build up to this year’s Christmas Number 1 single and perhaps more pertinently, the ‘rise and rise’ or ‘rise and forget’ of another ‘singing’ superstar. By now, those with a vested interest – financial or otherwise – in the final acts should have observed due diligence in registering social platforms for the acts as their brand begins to snowball.

Let us look at the evidence of this series of The XFactor…

Janet Devlin

Youtube http://www.youtube.com/user/janetdevlin

Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/janetjealousy Joined April 26

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/thejanetdevlin

Frankie Cocozza

Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/frankiecocozza Joined July 28

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/FrankieCocozzaOfficial

Kitty Brucknell

Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/kittybrucknell Joined September 1

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/kittybrucknell

Rhythmix

Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/rhythmixoffic  Joined Mon September 26

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/RhythmixOfficial

On a number of acts, notably the groups and ‘Overs’ category, there was a landgrab for social platform accounts and domain names on Monday 26 September. This seems late in the process of the XFactor cycle to secure such valuable properties to the brand of each act. In terms of verification, we can assume these are the official properties of the acts as they are all linked to from the XFactor website.

If we scrutinise the social media set up further by exploring the acts that didn’t make it, we can see more tell tale signs that the social media landgab occurs late in the process of firming up the roster of Xfactor finalists. If it was me, I would look to secure any profiles that can be directly used to promote a new brand as soon as possible.

(Caveat: A similar situation has arisen in the recently formed airline, FastJet, by EasyJet Founder, Stelios. The announcement of the new company was made via the www.fastjet.com website and shortly after, an industrious soul, not associated with the company, made an opportunistic grab for the Twitter account @FastJet. Not the end of the world but a simple tick of the box process in setting up a company, no? )

Jade Richards joined Twitter on August 22. Fellow rejects, Luke Lucas and Terry Whinstanley do not have a profile on Twitter but numerous Fan pages and campaigns to bring them back exist on Facebook in an unofficial capacity.