How 'Sharknado' Became a Social Media Phenomenon

If you've been anywhere near Twitter in the past 24 hours, you've probably been sucked into the phenomenon that is Sharknado. The campy Syfy TV movie, which aired Thursday night, has dominated conversation on the service for the past day. How did a low-budget B movie become the hottest thing on the Internet?

Twitter dissected Sharknado's rise in a blog post Friday night. The movie about tornadoes that scoop up sharks from the ocean and dispense them on unfortunate Los Angeles residents was the most-tweeted TV show from the night, generating 318,232 tweets during broadcast and 5,000 tweets per minute at its peak. That put it well ahead of competing shows Big Brother and a Royals-Yankees baseball game.

Two key factors contributed to Sharknado chewing up the evening, wrote Twitter Data Editor Simon Rogers: smart buzz generation, led by Syfy's senior vice president of digital, Craig Engler, and participation by leading Twitter celebrities such as Wil Wheaton, Damon Lindelof and others (disclosure: I used to work for Engler as editor of Syfy's DVICE).

A few hours before the movie aired, Engler began to retweet what fans were saying about the movie on the official @Syfy Twitter account in addition to a few Sharknado "warnings." Engler says the "feeding frenzy" really began about 20 minutes before the movie was due to start.

The thing that transformed a otherwise normal Syfy campfest into a Level 5 Sharknado, however, was the participation of Twitter A-listers. Wil Wheaton tweeted a Vine counting down to the movie to his 2.4 million followers, then proceeded to live-tweet the movie. So did Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof (although he also said he wasn't actually watching it). Patton Oswalt and Mia Farrow even got into the action.

At one point, Engler says he was having a Twitter conversation with Olivia Wilde and Elizabeth Banks about the Sharknado sequel (which is already in the works) and the roles they wanted to play. Lindelof said we was writing it. (Note: Not everyone may be serious.)

Rogers says 495 accounts contributed 15% of the Sharknado conversation. Wheaton "dominated" the conversation around the movie, Rogers wrote, and Twitter created a graphic that illustrates who on Twitter was the most influential on the topic (the big ball in the middle is the total conversation, Rogers says):

Click image to explore the network

The next morning, the effects of the phenomenon were probably best summed by by this tweet from the real mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti:

Share your thoughts on the Sharknado social-media phenomenon in the comments.

BONUS: Best Shark Memes Ever

Image courtesy of Syfy