When I hear the term ‘going viral,’ I think of YouTube videos with millions of views, and people getting their fifteen minutes of fame. I don’t think of blog posts or Vines, or really anything other than YouTube videos. My article last week, 47 Questions I Ask My Roommate (Almost) Every Dayhas over 90,000 shares and 500,000 views in less than a week.
As I watched those numbers climb, I was in shock. Those numbers were too big for me to fathom. But so what? It’s a lot of people, but not that many people. It’s not a viral amount of people. It wasn’t until a friend from home posted the link to my article, with a caption proudly stating that she knew someone who had created something that had gone viral that I began to think. I was posed with an interesting question. Did my article go viral? In order to figure that out I had to look into what others consider going viral to mean.
According to Urban Dictionary, going viral is “An overused term for popular online content. At one point it was a legit statement, now it is used for anything that has over 100 hits by the media.” That definition wasn’t particularly helpful. Obviously I had more than 100 hits, but so had one of my other past articles. It had 103 hits to be exact. I don’t think many people would have considered that article to have gone viral. 500,000 views is a lot of views, but it’s still a far cry from the millions I associate with going viral. I felt I needed to delve deeper into what actual numbers people consider to be the point at which something goes viral. I found many definitions online that said that going viral means getting anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000,000 views. That was also very unhelpful. I obviously got many more than 1,000 views, but I am still a ways away from 10,000,000. I found myself stuck. I am therefore leaving this an unanswered question, and asking my readers for help. What does it mean to go viral? Did my article last week go viral? Let me know! Leave your comments below.
