#TheBigSocialBuzz

On January 14, a historical event happened on the Instagram social network. A photo of an egg scored a record number of likes, bypassing a snapshot of world-famous model Kylie Jenner with her baby. Incredibly, the egg enjoyed more than 20 million likes. A day later, the figure doubled and continues to grow. We figured out why the picture of a normal chicken egg broke the Internet.

How did it happen?

A photo of the egg appeared on January 4 in an account named world_record_egg . The real name of the page author is still unknown, but it’s clear that the account was created specifically for the record. Is this an experiment? If so, this example shows how easy it can be to make something popular on the internet. Now the world_record_egg account has only one picture. The profile picture for the page is the same chicken egg. Despite this, within less than two weeks, the page scored more than 5 million subscribers and gathered more than 1.5 million comments.To understand whether the page was created simply to go viral, we needed to look at the behaviour of the account creator. Is he a social media specialist? To get under the Instagram algorithm and make your account this popular requires a lot of work.Usually, promotion starts with adding friends. However, the Instagram algorithms allow you to send only a limited number of requests every day, otherwise the page may be blocked. It’s also important that you write captions under posts to garner attention – pages that don’t do this are often blocked for spam. The creator of the world_record_egg tag famous people and accounts of the world’s major media in the photo. This is an easy way to draw attention to the post.Another tool used is comments. The author tried to respond to all messages, so he increased the number of comments made on the post and attracted even more attention to the photo.Apparently, the author fundamentally does not intend to publish new posts on the page. He is, however, actively releasing stories – where world_record_egg shows funny pictures and communicates with the audience. Stories come out constantly: 3−5 posts every hour.

The most popular world_record_egg of the Internet got on the magazines covers

The main goal of this post was to get noticed by social network algorithms which would in turn recommend the post and account to other users. After preparatory work, the egg began to gain popularity due to virality. Other users came across the idea of an author who wanted to make the most popular post with a photo of a chicken egg and began to share this photo with others.The final stage of promotion was the publication in the media. All the world’s major publications, including, Mashable, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Independent, and many others wrote about this Instagram photo of a chicken egg. This further effected the popularity of the post.When everyone started writing about the new record, the egg had more than 18 million likes. A day later and there were twice as many. The number of likes is still growing.

Who “hides” behind the egg?

Everything suggests that this chicken egg has become a social experiment on Instagram. This happens often. For example, there was a case with an American who made a deal with Wendy’s fast food that he’d get a year’s supply of nuggets if he collected 18 million retweets. It didn’t quite work, but 3.5 million reposts are still an impressive amount.Also, We can assume that the author world_record_egg decided to make fast cash. The page already has a link to buy branded T-shirts. And orders will take only 24 hours. But no advertising in the account itself yet.It may also turn out that the egg is simply part of a bigger and more complex plan to draw attention to a brand. However, the project has been ongoing for almost two weeks now, and still, the concept has not changed.Many Marketing experts believe that this is not a marketing campaign, but rather a spontaneous phenomenon.

Why so much attention?

Most likely, people are primarily attracted by the idea – the picture of an ordinary chicken egg becomes the most popular thing on the Internet. At least it’s fun. In addition, the rapid growth of popularity is surprising, so users are willing to get involved and contribute to the figures.The egg is a symbol of belonging, acknowledgement, a flash mob — by liking it you become part of the historical event. When the numbers of like blew the minds of Instagram users, the only way to respond was to pay for a symbolic currency – like.We can only observe the phenomenon of the egg on Instagram. Sooner or later the noise will subside, and then the account creator will have to invent a new story or leave this profile as a museum piece on the Internet. Perhaps in the future, the author will reveal his identity and tell his story, but so far, he has not contacted anyone.Finally, there is another interesting opinion on the nature of the users who have liked this egg post. We turned to psychologists to understand what has made people pay attention to the senseless (at first glance) photo:‘To recognize themselves as narrow-minded and uneducated, not everyone can. Therefore, to pretend that he somehow understands what the author wanted to say – to like and attach himself to the circle of the “chosen”. The psychology of the crowd works.Many people believe that there is something behind it, it has some value. And not to be worse than others, new users join the rest.’The question is: did you like the egg?

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