Imagine your personal pictures, that you though were safely locked away, suddenly going public. Someone, somewhere dug into your library of pictures and started selling them. For the past week, a hoard of leaked celebrity photos gone public has made the headlines.
Every radio station I tune in and just about every publication I read has made some mention of the leaked celebrity pictures. Supposedly most were stolen from Apple’s iPhone cloud storage, but many were from other sources. Some of the leaked pictures are years old and are just now becoming public.
I’d rather not use my six hundred words to repeat the same stuff that’s been overplayed; however, I’d like to shed some light on how something becomes viral. For years pictures and videos of celebrities have surfaced but not many have become so wildly popular. Why is this a sensation?
I answered my question in the last paragraph. Nationally recognized news organizations reasoned the decline in Apple stocks was due in part to the leaked photos. Apple was due to release the new iPhone days after the leaked pictures surfaced. Coincidence or not, the Apple fallout gave credence to the leaked pictures.
While I was researching this article I found a website that was hosting the pictures. With a bit of investigation I figured out the site is getting roughly 25,000 hits per day. As a frame of reference, my company website is lucky to see 250 clicks per week. So, 25,000 per day is substantial.
Back to the original question, it’s mentions of the pictures by reputable news agencies that made them so popular. Chances are, without any discussion the pictures wouldn’t have reached such a pinnacle. Handfuls of them would have scattered the net and would have probably ended up on a sketchy website.
Viral content spreads exponentially. If I tell you and someone else something and you each tell two people, then they each tell two more it creates exponential growth. If the cycle continued ten times 1,024 people would know your secret. Hopefully you didn’t share anything too risqué.
In the case of celebrities and questionable pictures, all it takes is one picture and a couple brief mentions and all of a sudden it becomes viral, voila, exponential growth. For the rest of us who publish a video on YouTube in hopes of it becoming viral; different story. The video has to be something unusual and must be newsworthy.
Newsworthy, for the sake of our conversation, doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve escaped from Alcatraz. Rather, it has to be something that people will talk about. One of the truly viral videos I remember seeing was of a mouse scurrying after a marble. I think it was meant to be cute.
The mouse video became sensational because of Facebook and other informal newsy type outlets which made it stand out. Due in part to people’s short attention spans, content that is short, witty, and to the point seems to always be the cream that rises to the top. Kind of like this article (when I stay on topic).
Content becomes sensational and viral because it’s the topic of conversation. Pictures and movies of celebrities doing stupid stuff and mice chasing a marble are everywhere. Without other venues like Facebook and the news those videos become internet clutter. I’ve failed trying to make pictures of myself viral, most people simply turn off their monitor when they see my face.
(Jeromy Patriquin is the President of Laptop & Computer Repair, Inc. located at 509 Main St. in Gardner. You can call him at (978) 919-8059 or visit www.LocalComputerWiz.com.)