What does a viral hit look like?

So... what does a viral hit look like?

On Thursday, I posted a little rant, "11 Ways You Can Stop Pissing Me Off On Twitter". I intended it to be shocking yet funny, a mixture of over-the-top explosion with a message.

Each of the 11 Ways not only described what the objectionable action was, but clearly stated why I thought they were bad, and also (and this is important) offered specific suggestions on alternative behaviors that would improve the Twitter experience.

Improve it in my eyes, that is, but I'm not that different than anyone else as an interlocutor.

I posted it Thursday afternoon and tweeted the link. I was amazed at the response. So pleased and amazed that I tweeted the link once again on Friday morning.

That's when things took a turn upwards.

The scale on that image is dramatically skewed by the hits from the last two days. I usually get ~30 hits a day, a level I'm reasonably pleased with. Yesterday was more like 800 hits. By noon, "11 Things" had surpassed the previous champ, "Ode To The Semicolon" in terms of page hits. By the end of the day, it had doubled that previous record.

I've done popular things before, but this is the first one that's escaped into the wild and led to this kind of a response. I don't know if there's a formal definition of "viral", but this hitcount is an order of magnitude over and above that for any other single post, besting a year's worth of hits in less than hours; from my perspective, that's pretty viral.

Fascinating.

UPDATE, 8/29/10: I was assuming that this thing had run its course, but between yesterday and today, that rant got another ~500 hits, which would have topped the Ode all by itself. Assuming weekend traffic is lighter than weekday traffic, I can only wonder what this week will bring.

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