Tracking “Boba Fett’s Invoice”

(or, Hey, It Went Viral)

Daniel Wallace
twitter.com/danwall88
October 28, 2010
So this happened:
Artist Brock Davis

created Boba Fett’s invoice to Jabba the Hutt

and posted it to his Flickr photostream on

Wednesday morning Oct. 27, 2010.
We did the usual, base-level social
media: Facebook and Twitter.
After a few hours of friend
passalong, it had over 1,000 views.

Which was pretty cool.

Late morning:

I submitted “Boba’s Invoice” to Digg,

Reddit, The Daily What, and
BoingBoing, to see if any of them
would pick it up.
Digg went nowhere.
Reddit went nowhere.
But wait! I’m a dumbass; somebody
had already submitted it to Reddit
before me.
And by midday, Reddit was driving 40%
of all views.

Total views now nearly 8,000.

Early afternoon:
BoingBoing picks it up from my
submission (via the BB Submitterator).
BoingBoing drives traffic from their
site directly, and also from their
Twitter feed.
Global monthly
visits 5.3MM

Followers
60,000

Total views now close to 15,000.

Mid-afternoon: The Beast Begins
to Feed Itself

Sites post it because other sites are

posting it.
Mid-afternoon: The Beast Begins
to Feed Itself

Sites post it because other sites are

posting it.
Followers
166,000
Mid-afternoon: The Beast Begins
to Feed Itself

Sites post it because other sites are

posting it.
Global monthly
visits 8.2MM
Mid-afternoon: The Beast Begins
to Feed Itself

Sites post it because other sites are

posting it.
Sampling of
the Tumblr
network

Total views now close to 20,000.

Late afternoon:
The Daily What comes through!

Global monthly
visits 3.0MM

Total views now over 26,000.

Late evening:
Twitter quiets down, but some sites
are still getting on board.

Global monthly
visits 2.2MM
Including College Humor:

Global monthly
visits 15.6MM
And a few sites that decided to
repost the image without also posting
a link (boo!)
Global monthly
visits 198k

Total views now over 31,000.

Bedtime!
The next morning we ran stats to get
a 24-hour snapshot.

Total views: 47,472!

Biggest traffic drivers:

Reddit 29%
BoingBoing 13%
Flickr 11%
Facebook 10%
Twitter 4%
Google 2%
College Humor 1%
And it’s not over…

Latecomers (c’mon guys, it’s been a

whole 24 hours!) are now making an
impact, including:
What did we learn?
Wow, Reddit!

The crowdsourced link-sharing site

drove nearly a third of all total
views.

Keep in mind that Reddit requires you

to click through to the Flickr page
(unlike other sites that posted the
image directly).

Still, it’s way more than I would

have guessed.
Huh, Twitter.
The Twitter chatter seemed big because
we were closely monitoring it.

But Twitter was only 4% of total

views. That ain’t nothing, but it’s
less than I would have guessed.
Okay, but search still counts for
something.
Buzzfeed, Neatorama, Nerd Bastards,
and Funny or Die didn’t even register
in our Flickr stats, but they’re in
the Top 5 on Google.
These things have the lifespan of
a mayfly.

“Boba’s Invoice” will probably have a

long tail of popularity, but the
majority of its impact fell within a
span of hours that can be numbered in
double digits.
So why did it go viral?

It’s true that Brock is scary

talented, but it helped that “Boba’s
Invoice” had these 3 key factors:

1) It’s funny
2) It’s short
3) It riffs on pop culture
So why did it go viral, Brock ?

“I think that people comb the web

looking for something to talk about
because posting something cool to
your buddy makes you cool by default.

Ultimately we all want people to

think we’re cool.”

-- Brock Davis
What did we REALLY learn?
Boba Fett will charge you up the
ass for unnecessary expenses.

(via Reddit)
 Thank you!

“Boba’s Invoice” Daniel Wallace

Brock Davis, user Laser Bread on Flickr twitter.com/danwall88