Internet hijinx move at the speed of high school gossip

I often wonder how internet phenoms begin, and how things travel around the internet so quickly. As an interactive researcher, I spend most of my day on the web, and I come across so much of the craziness that makes web 2.0 go 'round. Today's gem... well, like most day's gems, I'm not sure exactly where it came from. But it's causing quite an uproar.


This photo montage of President Obama throwing a snowball (presumably) at a cat has caused furious cries, from cat lovers who believe it's real, and demands that PETA be called immediately. It has also caused a stir among Obama adversaries who feel it adds justification to their cause.

Of course there is a large camp out there (myself included) who believe that this whipped together to cause precisely the stir it is causing now. Let's go to the numbers: Reddit is showing nearly 400 responses to this photo, BuzzFeed is showing over 6,000 views and it has been "Dugg" over 8,000 times on Digg. Do you think we'll get an official presidential statement?

UPDATE: The snowball photos seem to be from December sometime. The cat addition is fairly recent.

Happy Birthday Facebook!!!

Last night, Mark Zuckerberg announced, via Facebook's Facebook page, that today, our dear social networking lifeline will be 5 years old! Personally, I was surprised that they did not publicize by putting the event on my birthday list. But, they did add a "Thank You" gift to it's gift store application, as a way to thank users. They have also begun scheduled delivery of Facebook birthday gifts.

The news met with mixed results in the blogosphere:

"my freshmen year of college we had to approach girls.... i didnt have the balls to do it... by my sophmore year of college FB was out and i owe them a thanks in the lady department" - Male, 24

"My roommate would be overly bored without being able to Facebook stalk constantly." - Male, 18, Greensboro, NC

"i still feel like being on facebook is like going to a party with a bunch of kids from high school that you were not really friends with but still knew who they were. And for some reason you can hear every conversation in the room at the same time and occasionally someone will yell out to the entire party what they are doing at that current time. then someone will poke you for some unexplained reason.

...yet i still attend this party." - Male, 22

Quotes courtesy absolutepunk.net, though this event also triggered a considerable Twitter buzz.

What would you get/tell the old Book for it's birthday?

Free Grand Slam Day at Denny's!!!

This morning I noticed that two of my friends, who live in different states, had updated their facebook statuses to say they were off to get a Grand Slam Breakfast at Denny's. Personally, I have only been to Denny's a handful of times, and it was in college when that was one of the few places that stayed open late. I was partial to some sort of chicken sandwich that seems to have since left the menu. So I had to Google the Grand Slam and see what was going on.

Following the debut of their first ever Super Bowl ad, Denny's is giving a "Free Grand Slam to everyone in America." As a New Yorker, I can hardly tell you where the nearest Denny's is (thought Mapquest suggests it's somewhere between Rahway and Iselin, NJ), so I did not pay much attention to this claim when it aired. But apparently my friends in the rest of America took note.

So how well is their push to regain slipping breakfast market share working out for them? Well, according to the 1400 people who are tweeting about Denny's on Twitter, there are long lines, Denny's is giving out rain checks for those who can't get breakfast, and the local news stations are reporting on the Denny's mayhem. Free publicity. Sweet. Sounds like overall success for the home of the Grand Slam. Have you had your free Grand Slam yet?