First time heard about bitcoin was in late 2013- start of 2014 when the price reached 1k$ and this thanks to tv channels which made many reports about it, well didn't joined the wave at that time but i started using bitcoin few months later.
I think many people followed the same path.
Nice free ads for bitcoin and another wave of users will join the party soon
This pattern is correct. There is nothing more convincing and tempting for people than bitcoin high price. I expect that we will be a lot of new users here on bitcointalk soon.
I have no idea how many new account are being registered everyday, but during these price spikes it must be really high number.