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Kate’s Party: Viral marketing through Facebook?

Tuesday 27 Apr 2010 5:28 p.m.

By Samantha Hayes

An Australian girl has learned the hard way about posting party details on Facebook – or has she?

More than 60,000 people RSVP’d to Kate Miller’s birthday party at her apartment in Adelaide, before the Facebook event was cancelled.

The original Facebook page for the party has been removed, but 500 spin-off pages have appeared.

Among them, ‘Kate’s Surprise Birthday Party’, ‘The Old Kate Wouldn’t Have Cancelled Her Parties’, ‘Who Wants To Carpool To Kate’s?’ and ‘If Justin Bieber Is Going To Kate’s Party, I’m Cancelling’.

“I think it’s one of those amazing spontaneous combustions that happen on the internet,” says Colenso BBDO Advertising Director James Hurman.

Details published online include Kate’s supposed Adelaide address and her cell phone number.

Because the event was listed as open, others were able to invite their own friends. There were claims Jetstar was offering $1 flights to help party goers get to Kate’s – which wasn’t true.

What wasn’t clear was whether Kate was even a real person, or if this was a viral marketing campaign.

Mr Hurman doesn’t think so.

“It would be an amazing feat of self-restraint if there was someone behind it, for them not to come and let the cat out of the bag and claim some of the spoils of that success,” he says.

But today Australian writer David Thorn claimed he posted the original event on Facebook, then Tweeted about it to his 27,000 followers to highlight Facebook’s lack of privacy.

His tweet read: “Yay. Kate’s having a party in her small apartment. Hit attending & give the host an aneurysm”.

With a book called The Internet is a Playground and now printing t-shirts saying “I attended Kate’s party”, it’s quite possible Mr Thorn is making a name for himself at Kate’s expense.

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