Roll up. Roll up.

Roll up for the circus was the clarion call of Big Brother (BB) producers Endemol as the final series of BB kicked off last Wednesday.  Thirteen housemates and a ‘mole’ entered the house and we were off.  Shabby, Caoimhe, Ife, Corin, Rachael, Sunshine, Louise, Steve, John-James, Ben, Nathan, Govan, Dave & Mario the mole were in.

So, we joined the conversation around the online watercooler to bring you a 360-analysis of all the goings on in the house, the nominations & evictions, the twists & turns, who’s saying what, why and where.

Over the first few days all the housemates began to ‘bond’.  All was quiet in the state of Endemol.

But, all circuses have a ringmaster and Big Brother set wild-card hopeful Mario, now called Moley, a secret, ‘impossible’, task to sabotage the house until Saturday.  He wasn’t ‘officially’ rumbled by the others and was allowed to stay as a bona-fide housemate – with all the usual trappings: rows, conspiracies and a love interest.

So, where was everyone talking about BB?  A quick look at the channel breakdown showed all the noise was on Twitter with a 73.8 per cent share of voice.  In terms of authority, our social media measurement system scored Yahoo! Answers highest with a 62.6 per cent share of voice.

Figure 1: Channel breakdown for the Big Brother discussion – 9/6 to 15/6

Who was everyone talking about?

Figure 2: Girls buzz volume – 9/6 to 15/6

Figure 3: Boys buzz volume – 9/6 to 15/6

The buzz was around Sunshine and Mario over the course of the first week.  We also ran a snapshot of the Big Brother discussion in online news and social media for the hot topics.

Figure 4: Topic cloud for the Big Brother conversation – 9/6 to 15/6

The stand-out topic was John-James, the bookies early favourite to win. The tweet below gave us a bit of clue about his early popularity.

Fast forward to Monday – nominations day.  The annual love-in between all the housemates came to its traditional early end.  Six days was a long time in reality TV and the honeymoon period was well and truly over.  The first row erupted between Dave and Govan – over some onions.  A right old ding dong followed.

On Tuesday, there was a nominations twist which created another buzz in the tweetstream.  First off, Shabby, Sunshine & Dave were put up for eviction by the house.  But, Dave beat the other two in a challenge, saved himself, and put Rachael up instead.  Shabby was agitated about her nomination and had a bust-up with Ben.

Who’s likely to go?

Figure 5: Sentiment for nominated housemates – 15/6

Yesterday, Sunshine was the most talked about.  She also had the highest number of negative mentions – mainly calls to get her out.  But, there were also reports that she was being bullied by the other housemates. (Daily Star 15/6)

Shabby was the bookie’s favourite to go at 8/15.  But, where we’re predicting Rachael.