#songsincode - Birthing a Trend

UPDATE: I've been playing with some stats.

Yesterday my colleagues and I managed to kick off a twitter trending topic, #songsincode.
Partly for my own record, and partly for anyone that's interested, I thought I'd record how it all played out over the day (Thu 20th August 2009).

For background, we're a team of seven developers working for the company Frogtrade in Halifax, UK. We have a fairly liberal policy related to twitter - we all openly use it, and as long as the work gets done the company is fine with it. We're also hiring if any skilled PHP devs out there are looking...

Anyway, I wasn't having a great morning brain-wise, and tweeted about it:


Of course, my colleagues jumped all over it:

"@asmitter You had better do. You and I both know it should be doStuff()" - @tomnomnom
http://twitter.com/tomnomnom/status/3423931044

"@asmitter I suggest doJunk() instead" - @proxymoron
http://twitter.com/proxymoron/status/3423925595

This prompted a 'meatspace' (aka real life) discussion about silly names in code, and I posted:

http://twitter.com/asmitter/status/3424294807

At that point we had our first #songsincode from @scawp, with his puntastic tweet:
http://twitter.com/scawp/status/3424409949

Inspired, I had a go with:

http://twitter.com/asmitter/status/3424504459

We had a back-and-forth and a chat about how this idea had legs. @scawp and I joked about setting up songsincode.com (which now exists, but isn't ours) and @proxymoron, always looking for the quick answer (and in the middle of tweeting his own), used the phrase as a hash tag:


http://twitter.com/proxymoron/status/3424623779

(Personally I'd have used "class you" and "$i->die++", but that's beside the point...)
So the creative juices were flowing, and we all had a go, often forgetting to hash tag it up. Our colleagues and followers started getting involved, and pretty soon we were thinking "can we get this trending?".

Still, a few guys & gals a trend does not make. Adam (@proxymoron) remembered an old tweet by Yahoo Evangelist Chris Heilmann (@codepo8) that tickled him, and retweeted it:


http://twitter.com/proxymoron/status/3425796203

Seeing our tag, and tweets thereof, he got involved. Score! With 3,862 followers (at time of writing) this kind of exposure was going to have a much greater impact than our sub-1000-followers-combined audience. Sure enough, they started coming in from people we didn't know. Exciting times! Chris obviously felt inspired, and really kept the ball rolling. Well, that seemed to seed it sufficiently, but we still weren't trending. We kept plugging away and went to lunch...

... but of course we couldn't leave it alone. iPhones, Android and N95s at the ready we kept checking and posting, and by the time we were back the search results were filling faster than we could read. This is the golden age of a trend: when it has enough interest to stay fresh and gather pace, but before it hits the list and the spam bots get hold of it.

Eventually, 5pm came around. Close to four hours of sustained growth, scrollwheel-killing search results, and a little twitter downtime (brilliantly expressed by Mark Allan) I checked the trending topic and - euphoria! - we were in!
That evening I kept an eye on it, and we managed to hit #3 at about 19:00 BST

Since then people have continued to tweet and even written blog posts and articles on the matter:
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/08/21/geeks-just-wanna-have-fun-songsincode/
http://bitpakkit.blogspot.com/2009/08/ktel-songsincode-100.html
http://www.wait-till-i.com/2009/08/21/wow-so-that-is-how-memes-happen-songsincode/
http://openquery.com/blog/songsincode-twitter
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/6066324/Song-lyrics-in-computer-code-on-Twitter-can-you-name-the-tracks.html
http://www.zotin.com/2009/08/21/songsincode-kreativitaetsventil-vieler-nerds/
http://www.buzztracker.com/story/7f20c262104898aef82dd718/twitter
http://www.zive.cz/bleskovky/geekove-zacali-na-twitteru-zpivat-slagry-od-taboraku-songsincode/sc-4-a-148407/default.aspx
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,644222,00.html (about half-way down - search for 'songsincode').
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1310862/what-is-your-entry-for-songsincode
http://www.whatthetrend.com/trend/%23songsincode
http://yuccatree.de/2009/08/lustiger-twitter-trend-songsincode-wenn-programmer-musik-horen/
UPDATE: We reached #2 at about 11AM (BST) on Fri 21st August, and currently still hanging around #3 (14:30), only beaten by TGIF and FollowFriday.
UPDATE: OMG! ZELDMAN! http://twitter.com/zeldman/status/3449601352
UPDATE: dostuff() is now called getExtraFields()
UPDATE: Finally, at 20:32 BST on Fri 21st August we stopped trending. Thanks all who made it such a success!

-----
Essentially, there were a few factors that took this from three guys in an office to a successful worldwide trend.

Trendmaking 101: What you need
- An accessible, sustainable idea that encourages creativity and/or competition (which we had by accident).
- Friends, to begin the initial propagation.
- A champion (Chris Heilman) who will spread it to the wider world.
- Lots of time to keep the early ball rolling, and for all the time you spend checking back on it!

What will happen:
- Multiple claims to the 'I started it!' throne - take it as a compliment.
- You will lose followers, due to the enormous amount of weird tweets you made to get it going.

Lessons learned:
- Unlink your Facebook from your twitter before trending something that not everyone will understand! (Yes, I had complaints)

My favourite? I'm going to be vain and tell you it was one of mine:


Want to follow those responsible?

Originators
@asmitter
@scawp
@proxymoron

Co-conspirators (aka 'friends')
@_SteveWilson_
@lingmops
@tomnomnom
@charlottegore
@man2fork

Champion
@codepo8