For five boys back in 2010, the dream was to become pop stars. Four years on, One Direction are one of the most idolised bands in the world. With a new X Factor series starting over the weekend, Plusnet explores the group’s extraordinary online success from where it all started… 
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Twitter loves to hashtag Harry
Whilst sowing the seeds of stardom in series seven of the X Factor, One Direction had 29,908 Twitter followers, their first tweet achieving over 5,000 retweets. Today, the band account alone has 20 million followers, a 67,106% increase. Lead singer Harry Styles has even more followers of his personal account, at 21 million. 
Harry’s popularity is further proven by the fact that children are 5% more likely to recognise his face than the British Prime Minister. A research study conducted by Plusnet with One Poll found that whilst 66% of children (aged 8-17) did recognise David Cameron, 71% recognised Harry Styles.
Facebook fan base
If One Direction’s 32 million strong Facebook fan base formed a country, it would be approximately the 40th biggest in the world. ‘One Direction-land’ would be larger in population than around 207 countries, including the following five places:
- Peru
- Australia
- Netherlands
- Belgium
- Greece
Not only do these fans use social media to read updates, 42% say that they would use it to grab the band’s attention through retweets, replies and comments. Our poll also revealed that only 12% would send a letter, showing a clear shift from traditional fan mail. A comparatively popular method chosen by 11%, was physically throwing something on stage – Harry once had a shoe thrown at him!
A never-ending playlist
One Direction’s debut single ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ has had over 544 million views, whilst their VEVO channel has now had over 3 billion views since December 2010 and has acquired over 13 million subscribers. To translate those views, that’s 68 million per month or 26 plays per second! In fact, if you took YouTube’s top ten One Direction tracks and calculated the number of views, the length of time spent listening to all of those songs would equate to roughly 18,498 years. 
Even past boy band rivals, Take That and Westlife, have less than 20 million views for their most watched songs. Only Psy can sweep the floor with One Direction, as Gangnam Style acquired over 2 billion views, the equivalent to 16,000 (long) years of listening.
The girlfriend effect
Being the girlfriend of a One Direction member can equally boost a social profile overnight, as former girlfriends have found out. 
Harry’s last known girlfriend, Kendall Jenner, saw her Twitter follower count increase by 1 million when she dated him, as the public wanted the inside story on their romance. Caroline Flack’s increase is perhaps the most impressive. With just 24,000 followers prior to dating Harry, her followers bumped up to 1.48m in August 2013, an increase of 5,085%. Not only are profiles put on the social map, even globally famous women see a spike in their follower counts. Taylor Swift saw her follower count jump 15% from 20 million to 23 million when she dated Harry and Ellie Goulding’s followers jumped from 1.5m to 1.8m when she dated Niall. Who will be next to experience the ‘girlfriend effect’? As part of our research, we asked fans who Harry should be dating. Wrecking Ball star Miley Cyrus came out on top with 1 in 5 fans believing that she would be the perfect girlfriend, beating off Katy Perry, Selena Gomez and the now-married Cheryl Fernandez-Versini.
Only going in One Direction
One Direction are not just winning awards for music, but for their sensational online presence too. The bandmates are amongst the best-known faces and personalities on the planet and they’re showing no sign of stopping! Are you a fan of One Direction? Have you ever tried to get them to share something on social media? Survey conducted by One Poll and statistics based on responses from 1500 children aged 8-17 One Direction logo from WikiMedia commons.