From teen idol to Twitter drain: the inescapable Justin Bieber

Posted on September 9, 2010

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You may not have heard of Justin Bieber and could be excused for failing to recognise him were he seated next to you on the bus – which is unlikely because he’s too busy eating the internet, site by site, gigabyte by gigabyte.

The diminutive Canadian pop and R&B phenomenon is, depending on your age, gender and tolerance levels for whiny teenage singers with dodgy haircuts, a heart-melting object of infatuation or a viral contagion infecting the web. First it was YouTube, which announced in July that Bieber, 16, had surpassed Lady Gaga to become the star of the most-viewed video in its history. “Baby feat. Ludacris”, from the singer’s debut album My World 2.0, had been seen more than 245 million times. Yesterday, that figure stood at 316 million.

Google, too, has been consumed by “Bieber fever” – the singer regularly tops search rankings – and now Twitter has revealed the extent to which the star drains its computing power.

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