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Discussion of Dogecoin explodes online


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 Chris Salsman December 31, 2013Coins, DogecoinscryptocurrencyChris Salsman   
 

An in depth analysis

I’m a new media engagement consultant by trade. I analyze internet trends and advise clients on engaging with their audience. Over the course of the last month I’ve gone from being aware of dogecoin as a joke to taking it very seriously. Dogecoin is exploding in popularity, but why? Expanding on a post I made to reddit earlier this week [1], this is the first of a three part series looking at dogecoin from a brand engagement perspective.

 

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Destination, The Moon

Beginning as a joke on 4chan, Dogecoin has gone from obscurity to trending topic in less than a month. A segment of the important sharing hub reddit has embraced Doge as a means of tipping users for generating good content. I decided to run an analysis on dogecoin after I noticed a massive spinoff discussion as a result of someone tipping another user in doge, the third I’d seen in a day. The key to successfully increasing the profile of a brand online is engagement, and when I see hundreds of comments spin off from something obscure I take notice.

When it comes to perception, Doge has something the other cryptocurrency coins lack: it’s fun. The meme is approachable and has demonstrated staying power. It’s irreverent. The central community for doge topic sharing uses comic sans as a font and a terrible layout, quite intentionally.

/r/dogecoin saw an increase of over 30% in audience size in 72 hours over the Christmas holiday. In terms of a growth pattern, this is decidedly non-linear. It’s explosive. Even some of the more conservative members of the cryptocoin community have to admit at this point: dogecoin is serving as an introduction to the subject for many young people.

 

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Dogecoin poised to break into the mainstream

The rate of discussion for dogecoin continues to increase, with over 14,000 results in googlenews search results on the evening of December 27th. That night I predicted Dogecoin would be a hot topic for news outlets within a month. Two days later we’ve seen The Atlantic, abcnews, The Verge, Daily Finance, and Business Insider runs stories on dogecoin. If this were an organized campaign, we’d call that earned media. And dogecoin is earning media like it’s coming from a faucet.

Whenever I advise a client I make a point of stressing the challenges and strengths of their situation. Dogecoin does face some negative aspects, but it has some interesting counter-balancing strong points. Nothing clears the mind like a good list.

Challenges:
◾Many people do not understand cryptocurrency or what gives it value.
◾There is a perception of being associated with the black market.
◾Many fear the volatility of cryptocurrency,
◾There have been several large scale thefts and frauds of dogecoin already.

Strengths:
◾The meme it’s based upon lends tacit credibility to the concept that cryptocurrency can be easy to understand and even mine, let alone invest in. Doge is approachable.
◾Dogecoin appeals to gamers based on hardware compatibility for mining and the concept of reward driven behavior.
◾A dedicated and engaged community is behind dogecoin. The holy-grail of online engagement.
◾The community practice of tipping redditors at large in dogecoins for good content is generating frequent discussions on the topic.

Dogecoin gives its users and community members a feeling that they have a stake. A community without a stake is nothing more than a fan club. Fan clubs can be fun, but a community that is literaly and figuratively invested in the success of its project is much more likely to succeed. This is what gives Dogecoin real legs in my mind.

Dogecoin faces challenges

When a popular online dogecoin wallet suffered a theft of some 21 million coins, the community rallied to support the victims. It started first as an organic process on reddit.com. Naturally, people sought solace from the community they were a part of, many were met with with being spontaneously gifted sums of doge large and small. This culminated in an organized effort to compensate the victims through donations [2].

When a possibly fatal vulnerability was revealed in dogecoin’s blockchain, the community and developers responded with an update to fix the problem within a day [3]. Dogecoin’s community is indeed what makes it so strong.

In the next part of this series, we’ll look at some very interesting highlights on dogecoin’s audience and discussion numbers. Dogecoin is a hot topic for discussion on twitter, reddit, and now many blogs and news outlets. We’ll take a look at the numbers and also give an in depth analysis of what they could mean.

But no matter how you look at that data, Dogecoin appears poised to break through to mainstream audiences as an easy to understand and fun to engage with online phenomenon.

[1] http://4x.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/1tuxcx/a_traffic_and_engagement_analysis_of_dogecoin/

[2] http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/dogecoin-dogewallet-hack-save-dogemas/

[3] http://4x.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/1tq34r/psa_all_users_please_update_your_dogecoin_wallet/