CAITLYN’S STAR POWER: Vanity Fair may have introduced Caitlyn Jenner to the world, but Jenner has helped the Condé Nast-owned glossy hit a new high in Web traffic.
VF.com on Monday received its highest Web traffic ever since it posted an image of Jenner on its July cover, a video of Annie Leibowitz’s photo shoot and a summary of Buzz Bizzinger’s feature on the reality star’s transition from Bruce to Caitlyn.
Traffic amounted to 9 million unique visitors in the 24-hour time period since posting midday on Monday, a Vanity Fair spokeswoman said. On VF’s YouTube channel, a video of Leibowitz’s shoot generated more than 9 million views by Tuesday evening. VF posted a second video on Tuesday at noon, which by 5 p.m. had garnered about 3,860 views. To give some context, the second-most watched video on VF’s YouTube channel is a Miley Cyrus shoot seven years ago, which garnered 2.4 million views. Christopher Hitchens’ famous waterboarding video is second with 2.3 million views. Most other videos don’t even come close to the million mark — instead ranging broadly from hundreds of views to hundreds of thousands.
The cover debut has exploded Jenner’s personal Twitter, which was launched in tandem with the VF reveal. At the end of the day Monday, Jenner had clocked 1.25 million Twitter followers; at the end of the day Tuesday, she had 2.17 million followers. (Jenner also launched an Instagram account that pulled about 1.1 million followers.)
Jenner remarked on her record-breaking Twitter growth on Monday, tweeting: “Another Jenner world record, and at 65? Who’da thought! Humbled & honored to have reached 1M followers in 4 hrs. Thank you for your support.”
The former gold medal decathlete also tweeted on Tuesday that she would be honored with the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the 2015 ESPYs on ABC on July 15.
“What the hell am I going to wear?” Jenner wrote, referencing the ESPYs.
That’s your cue, designers, to start lining up now.