Analytics Stories

CHAPTER 35How Did Buzzfeed Make the Dress Go Viral?

On February 26, 2015, Buzzfeed (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-dress-what-color-is-this-dress) created a post that showed a dress that appeared to some people as black and blue (33%) and to other people as white and gold (67%). Through Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media, “The Dress” rapidly spread, and by March 1, 2015, the original Buzzfeed post had over 37 million views. How does a site like Buzzfeed quickly identify that a post will go viral? A key metric used by Buzzfeed and other social media sites is

As an example, suppose that a Buzzfeed post is clicked on the Buzzfeed site 100,000 times and that the post is clicked 50,000 times on social media sites. Then the post has a social lift of 1 + 50,000 / 100,000 = 1.5.

Only Buzzfeed knows the social lift for each of their posts, but according to my daughter, Jennifer Winston, who was working at Buzzfeed when the dress went viral, highly viral posts have a social lift of 20 or more. Whenever Buzzfeed posts a quiz or story, Buzzfeed employees are monitoring minute by minute the social lift. If a post has a high social lift, then Buzzfeed employees spring into action. The first few minutes after the initial posting of “The Dress” article are described on FiveThirtyEight's podcast (fivethirtyeight.com/features/podcast-how-buzzfeed-made-thedress-go-viral/). Buzzfeed ...