So. The basics first..
However..
This group, and all you wonderful people, was the result of a practical joke at about 9am on a normal monday morning in sunny Adelaide, Australia. I am web developer with a web company (Good Dog Design), and as usual we were kicking around the idea of how to leverage Facebook for our clients. I had just seen the "If 100,000 people join I'll name my kid Spider-man" group, so we figured it would be fun to see what could happen with a similar, yet more ridiculous group. You know the rest. Yes. This is a parody.
At first, it was just us, then our friends, and then the world. It was interesting to see the viral growth rate before and after the minor media attention, and it was an interesting investigation into the growth and expansion of internet memes. I however am no Numa Numa or Chocolate Rain.
This was never more than a couple of bored geeks kicking around an idea. We hope you had fun, and a laugh, we really didn't mean to offend anyone and we hope you aren't too disappointed in the truth.
We learnt some important things during the last four weeks, that internet memes are uncontrollable and unpredictable, that viral marketing is hit and miss, and if you try too hard you'll more than likely fail. There's an organic growth behind memes like this, at first it kicked along slowly, 100, then 1,000 then 10,000. The movement between countries and growth was interesting, first US High Schools, then US Colleges, then Britain then Europe. We never advertised, we never spammed, it was all word of mouth, the concept sold itself. Content is king, even in web 2.0
We learnt the community sustains and promotes itself. I enjoyed seeing comments like "we made the newspaper", because I may have started this group as a joke, but the community took ownership, the pictures and threads were a constant source of enjoyment and I thank everyone who participated. Community is king.
I also learnt about the gullibility and laziness of main stream media when it comes to "teh internets". Neither The Metro, Sky News nor any other media orgs that went to press with this "story" actually talked with me, they took it at face value and made somewhat fools of themselves with it. Other orgs did contact me, including the BBC. I felt it necessary to tell them the truth, and once they knew it, they knew there was no story. My entire life is but one google away, it's not that hard to find out about me. I've also turned down paid interviews for "major womens magazines".
If you want to know more about what we do, and what we can do for your organization, drop us a line. We've worked with some big companies with compelling ideas, and some small companies with ground-breaking concepts. We know the web, and we can help it work for you.
Thanks for playing.
Oli