The performance – which surprised the show’s live audience, judges, and subsequently the world – has led to appearances by Boyle on American television programs like Good Morning America and The Early Show.
Now, the YouTube video of the performance is approaching levels of some of the biggest viral hits of all-time. Visible Measures, which tracks online video usage, estimates that so far Boyle’s performance has already been seen more than 47 million times in all, taking into account all of the reproductions of the original.
That puts the video in rare air among viral hits. Visible Measures points out that this is more views than Tiny Fey as Sarah Palin, shoes getting thrown at President Bush, and Obama’s election night victory speech. YouTube’s most popular video of all-time, sans Avril Lavigne, is Evolution of Dance, with more than 117 million views. At the pace the Boyle video is spreading, it certainly has a chance to eclipse that number.
While Boyle’s performance has a lot of natural appeal, the conditions have never been riper for a video to go so incredibly viral. Between Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites - not to mention mainstream media - the performance has been impossible to miss this week. Meanwhile, if and when Boyle decides to jump into social media for herself, she’ll have a built in audience of millions of fans hanging on her every word. It’s a fairly incredible, albeit not completely surprising story.