(I wrote this several months ago for a blog my sister and I have, where

we post family related pieces for a very small audience. Sometimes

I cross post and occasionally, like yesterday, I post something on Open

Salon that's meant for the sisters' blog. (Sorry about those grandson 

pictures.) I didn't cross post this piece because I'm a little embarrassed

that my "25 Things.." post keeps showing up. But last week, when

Lezlie did the Open Call about our most viewed posts, fernsy

mentioned that she'd like to hear what it feels like to have a post go

viral. Since then, I've gotten a few PM's asking me the same thing. So

I decided to share. Because I didn't make any changes, you need to

pretend you're on the Sathre Sisters' blog when reading.) 

Besides the posts I put up here, I write posts on Open Salon, a site for

open blogging with a built in audience. Some are just re-posts of

what's here and some are new posts, with no real rhyme or reason

for what goes where. The difference is in readership.

At Sathre Sisters, Ellen and I have eight followers. Seven are

immediate family members and one is a friend who we guilted into

signing up and who probably hasn't been back since. Not a single one

of our eight followers read or comment on a regular basis. And

although we didn't start the blog to get readers, we've found that it can

get a little lonely without them. Which is probably why our posts

seem to have longer and longer lag times. 

In contrast, Open Salon has thousands of members and non-members

who write and read and post and visit every day. People who have

been blogging there for a long time get lots of comments and hundreds

of views and are clearly part of a community who have gotten to know

each other from what they write. Some who live in bigger cities even

meet up on a fairly regular basis, and others have met up while

traveling. It's a pretty liberal place with some truly talented writers and

artists who are generally kind to each other, as well as to newbies who

sneak in, like me.

I've only been there for a couple of months and am still navigating and

discovering my way around. But I'm also slowly building up what

might be called a readership--people who stop by, leave a comment

and maybe even a rating (a sort of online high five). I'm thrilled when

anyone views what I wrote and feel like I'm wearing a gold medal

when I get a handful of comments or ratings.

Last month, while sitting in the bookstore waiting for people to come

in, having already finished the crosswords and sudokus from two

newspapers, I started writing a list of things I've learned from opening

a bookstore. It was kind of funny and kind of cute, but it was off the

top of my head and it certainly wasn't Hemingway--or even Erma

Bombeck, who would have been funnier.

I hadn't posted anything on Open Salon for a while, so I gave my

scribblings the creative title of "25 Things I Learned From Opening a

Bookstore," hit "post," and sent my list out into that unknown world of

the internet. A couple hours later I checked my Open Salon blog and

saw that I already had 92 views, pretty much a record for me. I

checked again that evening and my number had risen to 989, which

certainly would have been a record if I hadn't been sure that it was

really just a mistake.

It was only when I checked the next morning and saw that I had

thousands of views that I knew something had happened. I just wasn't

sure what. I played around with Google and saw that my post was

coming up on some Tweet site called Tweet Buzz and something else

called Topsy, as well as a bunch of other places--none of which I

knew anything about or had anything to do with--but all of which

seemed to be spreading my post to parts and people completely

unknown to me.

It's been spreading ever since and only recently seems to be slowing

down. Last time I looked, I had 418,266 views, which is roughly

equivalent to every person in every town I've ever lived in, as long as

you only count the actual City of St. Louis and not the whole

metropolitan area. And it's at least 417,000 more views than Ellen and

I have gotten during our entire maiden year on Sathre Sisters.

Now to put this in some sort of perspective, the song, "It's Friday,"

that went viral fairly recently had more than 47 million hits. Charlie

Sheen went from zero to one million twitter followers in two days. 

And Gaga has surpassed ten million followers on twitter. So, really,

my claim of going viral is relative. I'm still a very small fish in the

online sea. And, unlike Gaga, my numbers won't sustain. I'm more of

a blip.

Still, It's been fun. It hasn't made me any money, and hasn't brought

me any fame, but it did bring me two long lost college friends who

tracked me down despite the fact that I don't use my full name on

Open Salon.

More importantly, it's allowed me to brag to my internet savvy

daughters that I've gone viral. I'm pretty sure they're proud. They didn't

think I even knew the word.

Postscript. Since writing this, the number of views have continued to

climb at random speeds and intervals, and I've learned the post has

been referenced on numerous library and/or book sites and has 3.3k

Facebook likes. As of this morning, it had 545,021 views. My goal is to

surpass Charlie Sheen's twitter followers, but I don't think I'll make it.