In October 2004 we sent live the experimental viral site www.slapthecandidate.com to coincide with the US election. It was created to test our hypothesis that for a viral message to be forwarded on, it needed to have compelling content that gave real value to the recipient. In this case the value was an interactive, topical poll in the form of a game.
The site was sent to just 10 email addresses and seeded on only 10 forums.
DeepMatrix LiveStats gave us the following great results. In the 6 weeks that the site was live there were total hits of 28,802,416; site views of 26,183,712 and over 586,065 unique visitors. The site had over 3000 Google listings and had visitors from over 125 different countries (including Iran, Iraq and North Korea) and was mentioned on CNN. ABC, in The Washington Post and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Each user spent on average over 5 minutes per session.
Play the original game (10th October)
Play later version (24th October).
Please note change of links depending on topical story.
View CNN video (media player)
View CNN video (real player)