The butterfly effect of Twitter : Make a small showcase in Brussels, end up overnight on Fox News

It sounds like a modern metaphor of the butterfly effect at the time of Twitter.

You showcase once, in Brussels, before a crowd of 200-250 Belgian people interested in web entrepreneurship. Four or five attendants fire a small range of tweets about your prototype. Almost 24 hours later, you end up on Fox News plus a bunch of US media. Then become worldwide famous…

That is basicaly what happened to a group of students and their professor from the University of Hasselt, in Belgium, a few days ago. The prototype they developped, largely for fun, Twoddler, is now, unexpectidly, an international curiosity.

A flap of wings in Brussels…

As mentioned in the Fox News footage, Twoddler is a Fisher Price board for very young children that is linked to a Twitter account. When a toddler touches a mirror or a button, he/she sends a pre-written message to his/her parents via Twitter. As simple as that.

Twoddler was presented on December 2nd in Brussels, at the Beta Group, an association of Belgian web entrepreneurs. Around 200 to 250 people attended the pitch hosted in an auditorium of the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Only five or six people in the audience tweeted about Twoddler that evening (see screenshot).

… can set off, the day after, a flood of articles in the US and beyond

During, 24 hours, nothing happened. But on December 4th, Twoddler rose suddenly on the Twitter radar screen. Mashable, the prestigious online media, wrote a post entitled “The Baby Toy that Twitters“. Overnight, Twoddler became worldwide famous …

We asked Adam Ostrow, chief editor of Mashable and author of the post regarding Twoddler, how he did hear about the “Toy that twitters”.

“I think a reader just submitted a link to us and we thought it was neat, so we wrote about it ” answered Adam Ostrow, to us.

“We did nothing special, but talk at the Beta Group, in front of a Belgian audience…That’s the power of Twitter”

The word was spread. The following days, the most respected websites and medias told about Twoddler: CNET Asia, Wired, Engadget, GeekSugar.com, Torronto Start, Geek.com, momlogic.com, slipperybrick.com, voxy.co.nz, and more…

The cumulative readership of all those medias goes beyond the 10 millions… Not bad starting from an evening gathering in an auditorium of a Belgian university (altough with more than 200 people attending)….

Kris Luyten, the professor of the Hasselt University who supervises the Twoddler project, is still under the emotion :

We took no action whatsoever ourselves. We did not contact anyone, we merely gave a talk at the betagroup, and that is the source of every twoddler event (message, post, comment, mail) that followed. So, probably the tweets and posts from the betagroup members are responsible

I guess it is the combination of “something for twitter” and “something for toddlers” that started this unsolicited viral media campaign This combination makes it a news item perfectly suited for social networks to spread and support (…) [Maybe] is it the magic of Twitter ?

[Anyway] I think my students have a lot of fun seeing this all happen, certainly since we never ever expected this to happen at all