An internet campaign was the impetus behind the Christmas number one single competition in the UK being won by Rage Against The Machine, and not the widely expected winner of the popular X Factor television show, Joe McElderry.
In recent years, the winner of the televised talent show has been the most popular single in the Christmas chart, usually beating its opponents by numbers ranging in the hundreds of thousands. But this year, the power of Facebook, social networking and MSN has been harnessed by a couple working from their kitchen.
Facebook and Twitter campaign wins Christmas number one in UK
The campaign began because they viewed Christmas as a sacred time, and they thought that the race for Christmas number 1 had been all but destroyed by the popoularity of the television show. With this idea in mind they created a Facebook group encouraging people to boycott buying the X-Factor single and directing people to buy the Rage Against The Machine effort instead.
The messages were sent in large part via Facebook chat, and support was also shown in people’s status messages and updates. Myspace was also leveraged in the plan to good effect, as was Twitter – with thousands of tweets during the week urging people to go out and buy the single, or download it. The Rage Against The Machine single set a new record for single sales in its first week in the UK.
With more than 600,000 tracks bought, the only true winners in this case are the record companies, who have made a bundle of money on the back of both campaigns. What is most suprising is that people were so quick to buy the RATM single which does not seem to be extremely ‘Chistmasey’ in spirit.
The power of social networking is clear when it comes to situations such as this, where mobilizing large numbers of people to act is just the click of a mouse away. It remains to be seen if this sort of mobilization is anything more than a fad, or if can be used for something more constructive such as raising money for charity in the coming months and years.