Tag Archives: social media hype

Why You Won’t Create the Next Social Media Frenzy

Barechested Man Using DeodorantLast week Old Spice made some funny videos. Maybe you’ve heard about it?

Of course you have.

Now it is apparently time for you to learn from it, as you undoubtedly hope to be the next Old Spice-like thing that all the kids are talking about on the internets. But I’m going to go out on a limb and say it is very unlikely that Old Spice’s success can be replicated by you, or anyone. And I’m not saying that because I think Old Spice’s campaign was some perfect storm that wasn’t meant to take off like it did; it was clearly a well-engineered piece of awesome. And I’m not saying that we’ll never see a wildly popular campaign like this ever again; we will. But it won’t be anything like the Old Spice campaign because we’ve already seen that. Continue reading

Tweets as Supposed Evidence? (a.k.a. When SM Hype Detracts from the News)

Stack of newspapers in rack, elevated viewIn a community characterized by comments and retweets, it is often difficult to notice when the SM becomes the news, rather than the news itself.

After reading some tweets the other week, I noticed the frequency of condolences directed towards @military_mom and felt compelled to dig a little deeper.

It seems, tweets have gone from being merely traceable in a Google search, to starring as the headline of an ABCNews story, the subject of Huffington Post’s scrutiny, and the fodder for a New York Post report as well. Continue reading