How The Egg Broke The Internet; A Hypothesis!
The post went up on Instagram on January 4, 2019 from the account named @world record egg. In under ten days it became the most liked picture of the world, beating celebrity socialite Kylie Jenner. A lot of the people have been curious how this was done. Underneath is a picture of the post which went viral.
The premise was simple, as the post says “Let’s set a world record together and get the most liked post on Instagram. Beating the current world record held by Kylie Jenner (18 million). We got this”
It was a simple post with a rather straight call to action. Like our picture. But how did this go viral, rather than any other picture? Clicked by a photographer at Shutterstock named Sergie Platonov, who was surprised to see his picture gain viral status. He believes the people were intrigued by the mysterious picture of a lone egg. But a little digging got me to realize it wasn’t that simple. Lot of mechanics went behind making this one picture viral!
The details of how it went viral are still murky, but what little is known can be clearly postulated.
The account is held by a UK citizen, whose identity remains a secret. But the brains behind the Idea was that of Ishan Goel, a 9 year old marketing Whiz. But how is it possible to gain such massive growth from day one?!
First off let’s talk about the brains behind the viral egg. Massachusetts-based Ishan Goel played a helping hand in making the photo of an egg circulate the internet and gather more likes than a photo Kylie Jenner posted of her and her baby Stormi’s hands last year.
In an interview with FEMAIL he claims that the idea erupted from the pages of Reditt. From there Ishan translated the idea into the real world. He knew the chances of getting a like are higher when your favourite celebrities/ influencers like the picture as well. So he used the influencers in his network to flesh out that idea, get them to like the picture. Now that the picture was getting massive number of likes the Instagram algorithm helped as well. Then comes the news channels which spread reported about the existence of the page. Now the masses, due to our inherent FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) checked the page. Those who wanted to get in on the trend, followed the page as well. Supporters of the page started putting #egggang in their posts and their tweets.
So on paper this is how it was done, an idea started on Reditt, pushed by influencers, the fire stoked by the media which once reaching the masses spread around the world. And today you have the page at over 8 million followers. Everyone waiting what it is going to do next.
Now how is this juggernaut executed? There are only theories. And I have read a lot of them, so I hypothesize here.
A BACKGROUND
Ishan has been in the Viral marketing business for a long time now. He has even done an internship at the Mark Cuban companies when he was 15. Additionally, he has worked on creating viral stuff prior to this as well. Most notable would be transforming the picture of Ryan McKenna into a meme. Yes, the Ryan McKenna who got his picture taken with Justin Timberlake and now roams round taking selfies with numerous celebrities. His Instagram handle is @selfiekid.
Ishan helped turn this picture into a viral meme.
In the interview, he stated that after the event, he approached Ryan and together they made it one of the most liked picture in 2018. This launched both their careers; this is where I think Ishan nurtured his network to reach high value influencers. Go have a look at @selfiekid on Instagram and you will know what I am talking about.
THE CONTENT
The key is content, plus context plus distribution. He focussed on each and every part very well. He knew of world’s love- hate relationships with the Kardashains. They represent the highest echelon of nepotism, diva-culture and celebrityhood in Hollywood. So he believed Kylie to be the perfect punching bag for the meme. I doubt it would have worked as well if he had targeted Tom Hanks or Hugh Jackman in the picture. The content was an egg, the context was-“underdogs beating the big celebrity”. Now only the distribution was left. And here things get interesting.
Again, I have read a lot of articles and this is just a hypothesis. But the data is pretty significant.In an article on Medium by Thomas Webb ,he recalls his surprise at the whole incident.
MAKING IT VIRAL
Now this is where things get tricky, and we see how beautifully this was executed. As soon as the egg picture was posted, the influencers changed their profile names.
This guy has a massive followership and is followed by the likes of Whiz Khalifa and Tai Lopez. So he is a big thing on social media. He changed his profile name to world_record_egg. And he isn’t the only one. After a lot of digging you get this data chart:
This is the graph depicting the number of followers few such influencers have. A median amount of 1.4 million followers from the data set Thomas analysed. So, this is how influencers were used. Probably in exchange of a small monetary exchange, the details of which can’t be extrapolated.
Now comes step two. The person who looks at this is bound to search world_record_egg definitely.
They purchased such repost accounts which have no posts and renamed them. Now when a people searches for the egg and finds so many fan pages or fake accounts, they realize this thing is bigger than they expected. And this is how it turned viral for one person. Now people are talking about the egg all over the internet, be it twitter or facebook #worldrecordegg and #egggang were trending. The idea of beating Kylie Jenner was trending, now how to increase its reach. Make it from a fad to news. This is where the true genius came in.
If you press the picture to look at who are tagged in it you find following :
1) Jimmy Fallon- host of the Tonight Show
2) Ellen Degeneres- host the Ellen Degeneres show.
3) Pewdipie- Youtuber with highest followers
4) Blogs likeMashable and Buzzfeed.
5) News channels like Daily mail, The Sun, Good Morning America.
If you post something and tag a celebrity no one cares. But when you tag them, and its as obviously uninspired as an egg, and two days later all you are seeing on Instagram are eggs, you realize the purpose of the tag. As hosts and bloggers, viral trend is something such people capitalize on. They have been very carefully selected as well. And this is how the Egg became news. An international phenomenon. As a viral fad it would have died very easily. But the world_record_egg also bring in merchandise to keep its followers interested. Two more pictures have been added on the profile as well.
THE AFTERMATH
The egg has begun cracking, which indicates metaphorically to its followers something big is about to come onto the page.
Adding insult to injury, Paper magazine, which was responsible for making Kylie Jenner’s picture the most liked picture on Instagram, posted the egg as the clear winner at a massive 8.9 million followers.
As per Google trends the term World record egg has boomed and now slowly going down again. So action needs to be taken before the term viral egg becomes oblivious.
Prior to this as well a twitter page became extremely famous, back in 2017, aptly named, Half An Onion. The intention of this page was to get more twitter followers than Donald Trump.
Hilariously, this was the page’s response to the Egg on Instagram was:
For now, the world waits and watches how the massive followers this page has garnered will be leveraged. In Ishan’s words
“There is no point of going viral if you aren’t going to do something with it!”.
