Well, that was an odd day.
As you probably know by now, Depeche Mode are running a Facebook Takeover for 365 days, inviting fans to apply to be in charge of the band's Facebook page for a day. I obviously couldn't pass this up, so I applied and, fortunately, got picked. It was a remarkable experience.
Before your day goes live, you liaise with the lovely Carl and Ale who sort everything out for you. You can submit up to 5 posts including an opening bio post and, once they've been cleared, the DM Facebook team schedule them and post them. All you've got to do is be online when they pop up and interact with any of the band's 7.3 million followers who happen to get involved. No pressure there then.
I chose 4 posts in addition to the bio thing (see here) and after more thought that was no doubt necessary, went for these (click each for article):
I thought they offered a good spread of things from the interesting (Gareth Jones) to the collector geek friendly and that seemed to work. What was most surprising though was that, firstly, Live In Scotland has proved to be the most popular post and, secondly, that many, many more people than I expected got involved both on the Depeche Facebook page and on the blog itself.
Th experience of seeing my picture on Depeche Mode's official page together with a picture of my records was incredible. For that second, and in the picture I captured (below), I featured heavily on my favourite band's own site. If you'd told the 16 year old me that in 1990, once you'd explained what the internet and Facebook was of course, he'd have been beyond happy. To be honest, the slightly older than 16 year old me was very much beyond happy when he saw it yesterday.
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| Just me and Dave - remarkable |
I'm a Depeche Mode fan and I know what we're like, but nothing prepared me for this. Before 2 p.m. yesterday when this all kicked off, my blog had had 251,000 visitors since I started this in 2011. I was happy with that figure and I've had consistent increases in hits each month since I began. Yesterday though caused these figures to go absolutely crazy. At the time of typing this, my blog stats are currently:
All time visits - 644,537 (an increase of just under 400,000!!)
Pageviews today - 222,673
Pageviews yesterday - 166,179
Good grief. The Live in Scotland post alone has had 180,019 reads since it went live at 9 p.m. on 20 April. That's less than 24 hours ago at the time of writing. I can't get my head round it really.
That's the Depeche Mode effect I guess, or really, that's the Black Swarm effect. Eager to read anything and discuss everything about Depeche Mode, the DM fans have blown my mind and the whole Facebook takeover thing was a one off, incredible experience. I even got responses like this from the clearly wise Camie Chance:
It was that sort of day!
Thank you very much for the chance Depeche Mode and thank you Carl and Ale for all your help. Thank you mostly to each and every Depeche fan who got involved. If you're new to this blog, welcome and I hope you'll stick around. If you're a regular, thank you for spreading the news around the world yesterday and making my day so much fun, if a little tiring.
If you're a Depeche fan and you think you're interested in the takeover, apply and watch your Facebook notifications go through the roof. You'll love it.
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