The media suggests that Ferret-owning by Madonna, Paris Hilton and Jonathan Ross has set a trend - does social media confirm an increase in interest as well as ownership?
Looking at search term traffic across the last three months in the UK alone there is definitely a noticeable upswing (the data stops prior to the Daily Telegraph April Fool's day story about the creature) on average of roughly 50% - which even accounting for a standard deviation of 10% is significant...

Buzz around ferrets has also risen by similar levels on a rolling daily basis across all social media types during the last three months...

and also on Twitter...

Social media does indeed suggest that ownership may be set to rise further.