The mystery of Entela Hysko – And how her name became a small Internet snowball
I'm still piecing the puzzle together, but for those of you who have spent an hour or two (or three) trying to figure out who Entela Hysko is, here is my analysis of how you got to hear about her.
It's one of those Internet phenomena, that you look at and think: this is an example of something that can happen on a much bigger scale. It's a mini-Internet-storm, but one that you can model future hurricanes on, or perhaps Net-avalanches.
It all starts with the tragic death, in a car accident, of Albania's biggest media mogul, 40 year old Dritan Hoxha. Hoxha died in Tirana on Friday 23 May 2008, when his Ferrari Fiorano crashed into a tree.
Hoxha founded Top Media Group, which spanned radio and TV stations, including a highly successful pay TV platform. He was a big name in Albania.
The news item which reported Hoxha's death also mentioned that the police confirmed that a 27 year old woman, Entela Hysko , was with him in the car at the time of the crash, and also died as a result.
What seems to have happened afterwards, is that the Internet was flooded with searches with the name "Entela Hysko", all trying to find out who she was ('who was the mystery lady in the Ferrari with the media mogul?'). But alas, this information was not available anywhere, and the only thing that came up was the same police report, replicated in news pieces in Albanian, Slovenian and Serbian.
What made things worse for those searching for Entela Hysko, was that quite a few websites, this one included, contain a feed of the most searched for words on Google, taken from Google Trends. When Entela's name became one of the top trended search words, the sites with Google Trends feeds were the only places (in English) that contained the words "Entela Hysko" - and as a result, they themselves got hit by large numbers of clicks that came from these searches.
It followed that site owners, baffled by the spike in traffic on their sites, all driven by this unfamiliar name, started searching for answers. Naturally, they googled Entela's name too, which conversely only made things worse. A snowball effect started, bringing further sites into this recursive pattern, and making the phenomenon even bigger (including pushing the term further upwards on Google Trends).
I hope that this entry may help to end this growing effect, especially bearing in mind the young woman who tragically lost her life in the crash.
UPDATE ON 29 MAY 08 - I've heard from several people who have expressed disgust that Dritan Hoxha death was all over the news and Entela who was with him barely got a mention.
One of her friends produced the following video and placed it on YouTube: