Twitter's favorite finalists for The Great British Bake Off
October 7 2015Article updated Thursday October 8th (Spoilers!)
This year’s season of The Great British Bake Off is nearly over. This evening’s (October 7th) episode will be the end of weeks of chocolate masterpieces, epic bread sculptures and collapsing gateaux, and viewers are waiting with baited breath to discover who will become the ultimate star baker.
Bake Off fans have been tweeting their support for their favorite finalists, so just a few hours before the show is due to air, we took to the Visibrain Twitter monitoring platform in a bid to discover who Twitter thinks will win The Great British Bake Off 2015.
How did we do it?
We analyzed all tweets posted over the last seven days containing the hashtags #GBBO or #GBBOFinal, or the exact expression “Great British Bake Off”.
The Great British Bake Off on Twitter
As a show that has become something of a national institution and attracts millions of viewers per episode, #GBBO gets its fair share of attention on Twitter each week.
Using the Visibrain Quick Trends feature, we can see that each episode of The Great British Bake off causes a spike in Twitter activity, generating around 70,000 tweets per episode on average.
Tonight’s episode is predicted to be the most viewed yet, so we can expect to see even larger tweet volumes tonight. The tension has been steadily building this week: 46,779 tweets were posted between Monday October 5th and 4 pm today.
Of course, the @BritishBakeOff Twitter handle has not been letting the final go unnoticed. The account has tweeted 29 times since Monday:
The most-retweeted post was the tweet below, sent this morning:
THIS IS NOT A DRILL. THE BAKE OFF FINAL WILL COMMENCE IN 12 HOURS.
REPEAT: THIS IS NOT A DRILL. #GBBO pic.twitter.com/SYRk6ujCkP
— British Bake Off (@BritishBakeOff) October 7, 2015Fans pick their #teams
As tonight’s battle of the bakes draws ever closer, Twitter has been flooded with posts supporting the remaining finalists: Nadiya Hussain, Ian Cumming and Tamal Ray.
So who is the star baker of the twittersphere? Fans tweeted about their favorite finalists using their names, but also the dedicated hashtags #teamtamal, #teamnadiya and #teamian. We compared the tweet volumes of all three contestants over the last seven days to find out who Twitter was supporting the most for the final:
1 . Nadiya: 6,249 Tweets
Facial expression extraordinaire Nadiya Hussain comes up as a clear winner on Twitter. Her creative bakes teamed with a lovable character and memorable one-liners have made her very popular. This tweet from The Great British Bake Off Twitter account encouraging people to back her using the #teamnadiya hashtag was one of this week’s most popular tweets:
#TeamNadiya
RT to pledge your allegiance
#GBBOFinal #GBBO pic.twitter.com/gLVB53QZ5f
— British Bake Off (@BritishBakeOff) October 7, 20152 . Tamal: 4,665 tweets
Trainee anesthetist and series heart-throb Tamal Ray comes in second. Although he didn’t have the most overall mentions, Tamal is the most retweeted of the finalists thanks to this Great British Bake Off selfie:
A little selfie taken at the Final. How far we've come! Hope you enjoy tonight as much as we did filming it. #GBBO pic.twitter.com/DX3nb5GB6u
— TAMAL RAY (@DrRayBakes) October 7, 20153 . Ian: 2,489 tweets
Ian’s inventive gadgetry and near-flawless baking weren’t enough to make him Twitter’s star baker. This is not entirely suprising considering he has just over 6,000 followers on Twitter, a comparatively small number compared to Tamal (45,000+) and Nadiya (30,000+).
The final of The Great British Bake Off airs tonight at 8 pm, so we’ll have to wait and see if Twitter got it right. Ready, set, bake!
UPDATE 08/10/15 (Spoiler Alert!):
That’s all folks, the results are out, and it looks like Twitter’s predictions were right! Nadiya’s supporters were jumping for joy last night as the quirky finalist was crowned Bake Off Champion. Millions were watching to see the final outcome and the show racked up a massive 199,605 tweets between 7.30 pm and 9.30 pm, more than double its usual tweet volumes.
That’s it for this season, we’ll have to wait until next year for our next dose of Bake Off madness.
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