I’ve had my first personal experience with going viral this week. 

As we all know, my beloved hometown team the PITTSBURGH PENGUINS WON THE STANLEY CUP last Friday night. I am of course totally elated.

On Tuesday of this week, I received an email from a friend containing photos of a victory party at Mario Lemieux’s house.  She’d gotten them from a friend of a friend of a friend…  the message said something like “don’t know where these came from, but GO PENS!”   They show off Mario’s fancy digs, Geno with some way-too-young girls, Crosby looking like a perfect gentleman as always, and, most excitingly, the Stanley Cup in the pool.  It’s a family party and there’s nothing scandalous. Naturally, I posted them to Flickr.  (Here for now.)

So, early yesterday afternoon, I received an email from ESPN asking for permission to air them and how I wanted to be mentioned in the credits.  I think my heart skipped a beat.  I hadn’t given the photoset a second thought since I posted it and circulated to some friends, so I went to check it out – it had been viewed almost 25,000 times in 24 hours.   (Needless to say, I told ESPN “HELLS NO!”)

I did a little looking around and found the link posted to some Penguins/hockey/sports blogs.  Flickr stats reveals that most of the traffic (35,000 views yesterday, 20,000 so far today) has come through direct links, Facebook and Google.   So they are definitely out there.

As someone who watches and comments on technology-enabled trends and works in the social media space, it’s been fascinating to experience the phenomenon of viral growth first hand.  I’m sure my experience has been like most: I put something out there with no intention of generating attention, it was stumbled upon and struck a nerve with a huge number of people, it took off in a way that’s grown beyond my control, and I was totally shocked to learn that tens of thousands of people were engaging with what I’d published.  Mine is also a (not uncommon) special case because the thing I shared wasn’t mine to share.

I’ve given a lot of thought to taking the photos down because I don’t want to invade the privacy of the players and their families — this is my team, I love these guys — but for now I’ve left them public.  I’ll continue to mull it over . In the meantime…

GO PENS!