The Balloon Boy Invasion

Yesterday was a big day in social media. Thanks to a little boy and his parent’s weather balloon. I was amazed at how this story basically took over social (and traditional) media for the entire day. Here’s how I found out about it while sitting at my desk. I checked my Twitter page and noticed #Balloonboy as a trending topic. After clicking on that I learned there was a 6 year old boy floating away in a weather balloon that used to be tethered to his parent’s house. Then I went back to my Twitter page and looked at the trending topics again. Six out of ten trending topics were related to the balloon boy from Colorado. Impressive.

From Twitter I jumped onto Google News and found the live video feed from CNN. Then onto Facebook where my wall was full of balloon boy-centric comments. So the story continued to unfold. I followed the progress of the story from my Twitter feed—with pictures from the ground even. Then I saw this t-shirt pop up.

And this artwork. And even Kanye couldn't go without commenting on balloon boy. Now mind you this was on the very day the event was unfolding. Before Falcon (balloon boy) was found safely hiding in his parent’s attic.

When I got home for the evening I checked my local news—balloon boy was the leading story. I continued to watch as Jay Leno made the event a central part of his monologue. Conan later chimed in with similar jokes about balloon boy. Even Jimmy Fallon mentioned the kid.

What amazed me most about this was how fast the story melted into the pop-culture zeitgeist. This boy was made famous in a matter of hours. And he had already appeared on network television! (His family was part of Wife Swap for TLC just a few weeks ago.)

Social media is powerful stuff. There is an interesting case study locked somewhere within the balloon boy invasion of social media. Especially when you consider he had participated in traditional media (network television) and new media (everywhere you looked on the Internet) with drastically different results.