Striking Gold: How Brands Can Spot the Next Alysa Liu

Using Infegy Starscape, we tracked exactly how Liu's viral moment unfolded: when it started, when it peaked, and how quickly it started to fade. Here is what the data shows and how your team can capitalize on moments like these.

What Is a Viral Moment, Really?

The word "viral" gets thrown around constantly, but in sports, a true viral moment is something specific. It can happen when a standout performance, a gold medal, a broken record, an unforgettable routine, or an unsuspecting personality drives years of audience growth into just a few days.

But is Liu truly a special case, or is it just the Olympics effect at work? Her peers, Ilia Malinin and Amber Glenn, offer a useful comparison. Both figure skaters saw a rise in post volume during the Olympics. Ilia saw a 14x increase (Figure 1), while Amber saw a 13x increase (Figure 2) in the respective post highs, showing us that what Alysa Liu’s doing is something a little different.

Figure 1: Social Universe for Ilia Malinin during Milano Olympics, (January 2026 to February 2026); Infegy Social Dataset.

Figure 2: Social Universe for Amber Glenn during Milano Olympics, (January 2026 to February 2026); Infegy Social Dataset.

Liu is an Outlier. Before the Olympics, total online conversation about her ran from hundreds of posts to a high of almost 8,000 posts. During the Milano Games, that number jumped to almost 73 times that. Not over a season. In days.

Infegy Starscape data for Liu shows each of these stages clearly. Figure 3 captures her normal conversation baseline in early 2025. Figure 4 shows what the data looks like when the moment happens.

Understanding the shape of that growth matters as much as recognizing it happened at all. There is a buildup phase, where conversation begins rising, and then there is the spark itself days before the winning skate and the medal ceremony. There is the peak: the win, when follower counts spike and athlete mentions flood in. And then there is the drop, which comes faster than most people expect.

Figure 3: Social Universe for Alysa Liu last year, (January 2025 to February 2025); Infegy Social Dataset.

Figure 4: Social Universe for Alysa Liu during Milano Olympics, (January 2026 to February 2026); Infegy Social Dataset.

The Signals Brands Miss

Infegy Starscape surfaces early signals before a moment goes mainstream. With Liu, those signals were visible before the gold medal night, if you knew where to look.

The first was volume. Before the major surge, her social universe had already crept to 31,000, almost 4x her regular peak in Figure 3. That could just be the regular Olympic talk like with Amber and Ilia, but as we keep monitoring, she hits 112,000 (Figure 5), way higher than her normal pre-Olympic range and almost matches Ilia's high from days earlier (Figure 1). That kind of uptick is not random noise. It means people were starting to pay attention. A brand tracking that number had a head start of hours, sometimes days, before the mainstream moment arrived.

The second signal was language. When you zoom into that early spike in Starscape, the word cloud tells the story. Fans were calling her a "rockstar" and describing her skating as "artwork." That kind of language is not sports talk. It is cultural recognition. And words like "medal" and "gold" were already appearing in small numbers before she competed for one (Figure 6).

Two early signals are worth watching for any rising athlete: a volume spike that pushes past the top of their historical range and a shift in fan language from performance-focused terms toward cultural and personality-driven praise. When both appear together, the crowd has started seeing someone as more than an athlete. Agencies that catch this early have time to reach out, prepare creative, and be ready to move the moment the breakthrough happens.

Figure 5: Pre-Peak Day for Alysa Liu during Milano Olympics, (February 17, 2026); Infegy Social Dataset.

Figure 6: Alysa Liu Pre-Peak Day Social Universe Drilldown, (February 17-18, 2026); Infegy Social Dataset.

Who Was Actually in the Audience

A follower spike only means something if the right people are in it. Six million new followers who have no overlap with your customers is just a large number.

The Infegy Starscape data has encouraging findings for a wide range of brands. Liu's audience skews young, which makes sense for an Olympic champion who first competed as a teenager (Figure 7). But the age range is broad enough to span multiple consumer segments.

Figure 7: Age Distribution of Users in Alysa Liu Conversation, (January 2026 to February 2026); Infegy Social Dataset.

The gender split is especially worth noting. Conversation about Liu during the Games ran nearly equal between women and men, with women holding a slight edge (Figure 8). It signals that Liu was not just connecting with traditional figure skating fans. She was drawing in a broader, pop-culture audience.

Figure 8: Alysa Liu Female vs. Male Social Universe Split, (January 2026 to February 2026); Infegy Social Dataset.

For brands in lifestyle, fashion, tech, and beyond, that is meaningful. This was not a niche sports crowd. It was a mainstream audience.

The Cost of Waiting

If there is one takeaway from Liu's story everyone should internalize, it is this: the window is very short.

Her social universe peaked at over 580,000 during the gold medal weekend. Seven days later, it was down to under 65,000 (Figure 9). Nearly the entire spike had erased itself. Any brand still finalizing deal terms or waiting on creative approval was now paying peak prices for a diminishing audience.

The drop after a viral sports moment is not gradual. It is steep. Mention volume falls sharply in the week following the peak, and engagement per post follows the same curve. The hours after a viral moment generate engagement rates that no budget can recover within a week.

Figure 9: Alysa Liu Social Universe Post-Gold Decay, (January 2026 to February 2026); Infegy Social Dataset

A Practical Framework for What Comes Next

None of this had to be a surprise. The data to anticipate it was there. Social listening is what makes those signals visible before everyone else sees them.

Based on what Infegy Starscape's data makes possible, here is a framework worth building now:

Set baseline alerts for rising athletes before major events. Understand what normal conversation volume looks like for each athlete on your radar, so any meaningful uptick is easy to identify.

Watch the language, not just the numbers. Set query monitors for when fan conversation shifts from talking about performance to talking about personality and culture, a breakout may be close.

Build pre-approved partnership options. When a signal fires, there is no time for a full approval process. Brands that capitalize on viral moments have contracts and creative ready before the event begins.

Define your response window in hours, not weeks. The peak of a viral sports moment lasts days. Teams need authorization to move fast without multiple rounds of sign-off slowing them down.

Social listening isn’t just for looking back at what already happened. Used well, and with Infegy as your partner, it is a live feed into where culture is heading. The teams working this way are already a step ahead and have a real speed advantage when a moment breaks.

Three Lessons for Brands

The signal comes before the headline. Social listening lets you see a viral moment building before it reaches the news. A volume uptick combined with a language shift is your early warning. That lead time is your edge. By the time mainstream media covers it, you should already be in motion.

Audience fit matters more than follower count. Liu's 6 million new followers are not all figure skating fans. They are a lifestyle and culture audience. Before acting on a viral moment, confirm that the audience actually matches your brand's customers. Infegy Starscape's data makes that a quick check.

Readiness cannot be built in hours. The brands that would have been able to move during Liu's surge needed partnership contracts staged, creative approved, and teams authorized to act within a day. That kind of infrastructure has to exist before the event starts, not after the moment lands.