The evening of Sunday the 4th of February was one that consisted of two major US influencers stealing the show, but for very different reasons! Both Justin Timberlake’s Super Bowl half-time performance and Kylie Jenner’s pregnancy caused a stir on social media. According to Google Trends both stories generated over half a million online searches from Brits, however was it traditional influencer Justin, or Instagram favourite Kylie who won the online stakes?

Justin Timberlake’s half time performance received over 5,000 mentions on Twitter (Sysomos, 2018). However, only half of the tweets surrounding the singers ‘comeback’ at the major US sporting event were positive, whilst 1 in 5 had something negative to say (Sysomos, 2018). The main source of dislike of the performance was the considered distaste for showing a projection of Prince whilst Justin covered his hit ‘I Would Die 4 u” – could this be something that comes back to bite him?

Moving to Kylie Jenner, a totally different kind of influencer, but one whose pregnancy revelation totally out-shone JT at the Super Bowl. After Kylie, a usual constant on social media, explained her recent absence, over 16,000 tweets circulated amongst the UK audience – 3X more than that for JT.

So, we have all known for a while that influencers like Kylie Jenner are spreading the word across various social media platforms, but when pipped against the more traditional stars the numbers show that they are now out in front. Do we need to make way for a new “Jenneration”?