On August 12 at 8:47 pm PST a friend I’ll call Liz posted on her FaceBook profile on a little YouTube video called Performance by MC SpandX, otherwise known as YouTube user Robin Moore. How Liz stumbled upon it, I don’t know, but this discovery initiated a chain of events that help pushed the video to ‘viral’ status.
At 10:20 pm that evening, Liz sent a ‘tweet’ to Lance Armstrong, who is a very active member of the Twittercommunity, having 2,051,935 followers (today’s count) and tweeting several times a day.
@lancearmstrong Hey Lance, you might want to check out this video: Performance http://bit.ly/s3XnP
The next afternoon, at 4:44 PM, Lance posted this simple tweet on his profile:
It’s all about performance. http://bit.ly/s3XnP
When tweeting, it’s common practice to shorten website address links (URLs) in order to get the most from the 140 character count maximum, so most likely Liz used a program called Tiny URL to reduce the video’s address from its original 43-character URL – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn29DvMITu4 to a unique 19-characters URL – http://bit.ly/s3XnP.
Since each Tiny URL is a one-shot deal, meaning that a new unique Tiny URL is generated if you were use shorten the original URL again, we can see that the Tiny URL in Liz’s tweet is the same one Lance used – a simple cut & paste job. Someone over at @lancearmstrong had indeed watched & retweeted Liz’s Performance link. Since then, Twitter has been responsible for generating 45,364 views (on last count), many, if not most, originating from Lance Armstrong’s August 12th post, according to the video’s statistics. Performance has now been viewed 897,822 times – by far the most popular cycling-related music video of our time.
It’s all about Performance, that’s the name of the game….
I pump up my tires and I oil my chain…
canucklehead
2 years ago
This attack on harmless, helpless and ultimately cute (if useless) urban hipsters by the mean arrogant roadie is reprehensible. Please donate generously to the Society for Hipster Ideal Transportation Solution to help prevent such attacks in the future and sustain the delicate balance of urban ecosystems. If measures are not taken to preserve the hipsters in their pristine environment, they may mutate into various invasive and damaging species, from yuppies (workaholized hipsters) to gangstas (criminalized hipsters) to the so-called “performance” jocks. The last one is a particularly dangerous sort of mutation, in which the hipster’s locomotion system (informally referred to as “fixie”) grows a cluster of several gears. In the worst-case scenario, the natural hipster’s coat may also undergo a shocking change: tight jeans, plaid shirts and old-school sneakers are replaced by distinctly alien neon-coloured lycra attire and clickety shoes. An ugly mushroom-shaped growth often appears on the head.
It may at first be perceieved as a positive development that gives hipsters an evolutionary advantage, allowing them to travel further and faster. However, this inevitably leads to the expansion of the mutated hipsters areal: from the selected hotspots in the downtown core to at least midtown and often beyond. Such radical expansion may lead to the collapse of midtown and inner suburbs. In extreme cases, these dangerous mutants may even travel well beyond the urban and suburban limits, and are sometimes seen (typically in packs) on country roads.
Help preserve the urban hipster for our children and grandchildren! Call 1-800-12S-HITS today to find out how YOUR money can save this majestic animal (yes, we DO take PayPal).