Bieber fever invades the web

Justin Bieber is taking over the internet. Depending on your age, gender and tolerance levels for whiny teenage singers with dodgy haircuts, the diminutive Canadian pop and R&B phenomenon is either 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, was seen more than 245 million times. This week 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.

Quoting an unnamed employee at the social networking site, Dustin Curtis, a prominent US blogger and designer, posted on Twitter this week: "At any moment, Justin Bieber uses 3 per cent of our infrastructure."

It's not surprising that Bieber is so big on the web - he was discovered on YouTube by Island Records in 2007 after his mother, Pattie, posted videos of the boy singing near his home in Ontario.

-The Independent

-Herald On Sunday / view