Beyoncé’s back in the top 10 of the Social 50 chart (dated Aug. 2) -- flying 32-9 -- after the long-awaited introductory photo of her newborn twins finally surfaced on her Instagram July 14.
The Social 50 is powered by data tracked by music analytics company Next Big Sound and ranks the most popular artists on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Wikipedia and Tumblr. The chart's methodology blends weekly additions of friends/fans/followers along with artist page views and engagement. The chart’s latest tracking week ended July 20.
The singer’s picture of Sir and Rumi, who had just turned 1 month old, helped Beyoncé earn 15.4 million Instagram reactions in the tracking week, according to Next Big Sound, a 291 percent boost. The image was also her first post on the social media service since May 30 and spurred three more later on July 14, including one of husband JAY-Z wearing a jean jacket with an image of Kurt Cobain on its back.
Meanwhile, Linkin Park breaks into the top 10 of the Social 50 (re-entering at No. 6) for the first time since October 2012 (and appears on the chart at all for the first time since June 2015), after the death of its singer Chester Bennington on July 20.
The band began the tracking week sharing a photo of its upcoming episode of Carpool Karaoke with Ken Jeong, followed by the reveal of the new music video for “Talking to Myself” just hours before Bennington’s death was reported. The final post was a simple picture, sans caption, of Bennington performing at an unknown concert, surrounded by lights from fans’ phones.
The band rises in all metrics as a result, including a bump of 1,564 percent in Wikipedia views, garnering 688,000 in all, while adding 1.2 million Instagram reactions and 177,000 Twitter mentions.
Additionally, Bennington himself debuts at No. 12 on the chart almost completely on the strength of Wikipedia views, attaining 1.3 million despite the end of the tracking week coming at the end of July 20.
