The Cordell kids had to reach 1,000,000 Facebook likes to get a puppy. They did so in seven hours. Their dad, who studies viral media, never saw it coming.
The Cordell Family
"Hi World," the sign read. "We want a puppy! Our dad said we could get one if we get 1 million Likes! So Like this!" And then, in smaller handwriting: "He doesn't think we can do it!"
And that was indeed the case. When Ryan Cordell promised his kids that if they could get one million Facebook likes, he'd get them a puppy, he thought they would never get there. "My expectation when they came to me was that they would post it and maybe they would get several thousand people who would come to the site over a couple of weeks. It would be family and friends. And then I did expect that friends of friends would find it and would come. But I just thought it would kind of peter out at that point," Cordell told me.
The plan, as he believed it, was that "in the spring, my wife and I would say 'Hey, that was a really great project. Let's go look for a dog. You did a great job,' " he explained. "We would have gotten a dog eventually anyway -- it was a delay tactic."
Just seven hours after his two daughters started a Facebook page entitled "Twogirlsandapuppy," the Cordell children blew past their goal.