Blackpink's first day on Weverse sees most daily users

SEOUL • Global fandom platform Weverse saw the biggest number of daily visitors on Aug 3, when girl group Blackpink launched their community, according to Weverse's Fandom Trend report released on Thursday.

The online fan community operated by K-pop powerhouse Hybe wrapped up the year's significant trends on the mobile fandom platform in the annual report.

It also showed that Blackpink's fandom, known as Blink, grew the fastest, with more than one million users joining the community on the first day.

Fans celebrated the day with hashtag #BLINK_in_Weverse, the third most posted hashtag on Weverse this year.

Beating Blackpink on Weverse were K-pop megastars BTS, whose hashtag #BTS saw 1.96 million counts over the year.

Enhypen's fans - Engene - were in fourth place with #CARNIVALwithENGENE.

The hashtag for the boy band's second EP, Border: Carnival, was mentioned 230,000 times in posts. Topping the list was #to_ - used by fans to write direct messages to artistes.

According to the report, 36 artiste groups are now connected with fans via Weverse, with 23 new teams joining the community this year.

It includes not only big K-pop acts, such as Blackpink and boy band Treasure, but also global artistes, such as British pop trio New Hope Club.

Around 16.8 million new fans signed up for membership this year, pushing the total users on Weverse to 36 million.

By Dec 14, around 200 million new posts had been made this year, double that of last year.

The number of comments by both fans and artistes this year reached 400 million.

Meanwhile, Aug 3 saw an explosive number of daily visitors.

It was also when BTS topped Billboard's Hot 100 chart with their mega hit single Butter for the ninth consecutive week, becoming the chart's longest-running No. 1 song of this year.

The second most-visited day was Dec 9, when BTS' Jin surprised his fans during the group's official vacation with the release of his new song, Super Tuna.

According to Weverse, with the Covid-19 pandemic, the underlying key trend in the fan community this year was the "online in-person view", which the company said refers to the virtual communication enabling fans and artistes to connect just like in a real-time, in-person environment even when physically apart.

THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK