Facebook and Social Media Analytics and Share Tracking

[chewy]

Hallo and oh please, WebmasterWorld Wizards, please offer some help!

My wife's got a whacky viral hit going on FB right now. It was at 1600 shares last night and is now at over 3200 and growing fast.

There's no way to keep up with the comments, etc.

But the real issue is trying to figure out how this all got started.

The not-so-good news is that this is from a random meme that she just posted to one of her groups, and it took off like wildfire.

Is there a way to track the virality of a certain meme (you know, image), and a way to find the originator?

Google images was helpful, but only to a point.

We want to find out who created the original image - it looks like using image search that I can find it back in September on Tumblr, but before that, it all sort of disappears into the cloud.

Are there heavy duty tools that can track this kind of stuff?

Details preserved to protect anonymity.

[tangor]

Tools? Not really, unless you can do image match. What might be helpful is to break the meme into the component parts which made it a meme in the first place.

All too often picture files are renamed many times over, in part to distance from the originator by scrapers, and in part to define the image for meme purposes, etc.

[edited by: lawman at 3:13 pm (utc) on Feb 1, 2016]

[chewy]

yes, that's the problem!

we're looking for "patient zero" - a very tough - and probably impossible mission. that's why I'm putting the word out to look for ideas.

image match turns up many duplicates of the exact same image, with no really good way to find the first one, or so - not that I can tell.

does anyone recommend any good tools beyond image match?

btw - thanks for leaving up the duplicate thread. I know I'm in violation - but hey, any answer is better than no answer!

[tangor]

Going to ask the burning question: is there a need to know the origin since it apparently appears in many places? Is there a desire to acknowledge the creator (and deal with copyright issues) or a desire to avoid copyright issues?

Otherwise, this kind of search can be a time sink.

[chewy]

The reason to know the origin is to credit the original author.

This particular darn thing is brilliant!

When this kind of thing happened before, I've been able to track it back to the originator using regular sleuthing tools.

We've also seen our stuff get horribly misappropriated.

The originator deserve credit! And there's probably a good story behind why they created this particular meme.

My wife rightfully doesn't want to appear to be taking credit for work someone else did.

and there's irony too. It doesn't blow anyone's identity by posting an image search....

So, who's the originator of this image?

<snip>

[edited by: lawman at 8:50 pm (utc) on Feb 2, 2016]
[edit reason] Sorry Chewy No Links To Images With Swear Words [/edit]

[chewy]

oops sorry - so the creator of famous Nancy Drew mystery "The Secret of the Lost *****s" will never be known!

[chewy]

thanks foo anyway - always fun - y'all have a great day!

[engine]

I'm not sure if I understand correctly, Chewy. if you want to find the image online you can, of course, use Google, and tineye. I presume you knew that.