Psy Remains at No. 1 on Social 50 Chart, Linkin Park’s ‘Echo’-Fueled Jump

Linkin Park’s new Facebook-personalized video for “Lost in the Echo” fuels the band’s big jump on the Billboard Social 50 chart this week. The act rises 23-16 on the tally, thanks to social interaction caused by the clip. In the video, photos from viewers’ Facebook profiles are incorporated into scenes, such as an early shot of pictures in a briefcase. A standard clip was also produced, sans Facebook capabilities.

The Social 50 chart ranks the most popular artists on YouTube, Vevo, Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, using a formula that blends weekly additions of friends/fans/followers along with weekly artist page views and weekly song plays.

When watching the “Lost In the Echo” video via a microsite, fans are prompted to login using Facebook-connect in order to personalize their viewing experience. The application then pulls a random assortment of pictures from the viewer’s Facebook photo gallery and places them in the video. Having the band members and characters in the video interact with physical photographs viewing your likeness is interesting, but since the pictures are chosen at random the attempt can often lead to unexpected and sometimes hilarious pairings. (Like a Linkin Park member interacting with a picture of your cat, for example.)

Twitter and Facebook sharing buttons found at the bottom of the microsite’s web page encouraged viewers to share which led to an increase in weekly follower acquisition. Linkin Park had a 10% increase in overall fan base acquisition — made possible by the addition of 27,000 fans on MySpace, 116,000 new Facebook likes and 27,000 new Twitter followers.

Still dancing like it’s nobody’s business in the No. 1 spot is Psy, who maintains his position with a 14% increase in overall fan acquisition despite a weekly decline in the overall plays to his videos on his official YouTube channel (down 19%). Psy — of “Gangnam Style” fame — continued to make the promotional rounds in the United States, appearing on VH1′s “Morning Buzz” and performing his now-famous dance with hosts Carrie Keagan and Jason Dundas. Furthermore, the lists of celebrities sharing the video increases with the addition of Britney Spears who shared the video to her Facebook page and Vanessa Hudgens who posted it to her web site.

Also moving up on the tally is Flo Rida, who climbs 33-30 as “Whistle’s” popularity continues to sound, rising 2-1 to reclaim its spot atop the Billboard Hot 100. Christina Grimmie re-enters at No. 41 after releasing several new videos to her YouTube channel, including a piano-based cover of David Guetta’s “Titanium” that has earned over 1.2 million views to date since its Aug. 24 debut. Michael Jackson also re-enters at No. 40, as an awareness-driving campaign centered around the 20th anniversary of the album “Bad” occurred during the charting week.

For the remainder of the top 10 leader bracket, Taylor Swift continues to shuffle (3-2) around One Direction (2-3) while Rihanna climbs (6-4) as does Katy Perry (7-5). Those moves, in turn, force Justin Bieber to bump down (5-6). Skrillex ascends (8-7) as does Jennifer Lopez (11-8) and Adele (12-9), leaving Pitbull to anchor at No. 10 for another week.

• Source: Billboard