Since the first of three General Election debates last Thursday, things have been a little crazy for the Liberal Democrats.
Initial reports suggested that Nick Clegg had "won" the leaders debate that was watched by a maximum audience of just under 10 million people, which of course means the majority of eligible voters didn't watch it.
Then something strange happened over the next few days, as eagerly reported by the media: the Lib Dems surged in popularity up and up, with more and more people reporting that Nick Clegg had "won" the debate to such an extent that the unthinkable happened: the Lib Dems went from their usual third place in the polls up to second place, making Labour the third party of choice with the voters. This included many people who hadn't even seen the debate changing their allegiance to Nick Clegg on the power of word of mouth alone.
And then again - some reports this morning had poll reports showing the Lib Dems to be the most popular party in the country with the electorate, with the Tories second and Labour third, something unthinkable just a week ago.
So what does this sharp spike in the Lib Dems popularity show? Well, it is very analogous to what happens when a site (usually relatively unknown with the masses, a little like the Lib Dems were said to have been) gets Digg'd to the top of the rankings or the old slash dot effect. These were notorious for bombarding a site with a huge amount of traffic (popularity) for a few days, then fading away. Based on a few influential people recommending something, tens of thousands of others checked out the recommended site leading to a huge increase in traffic.
And it seems that the election debate has caused something very similar to happen for the Lib Dems. It will be interesting to see how tightly the Digg comparison holds. Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems will be hoping it doesn't hold up. But if it does, then we'll start to see the approval ratings and sentiment for the Lib Dems fall back to their usual levels.
The interesting and important complication in all this, of course, is that there are two election debates to go.
What can a small business learn from all this? Well, we can be reminded it's a good idea to get your message out to as wide an audience as possible. So if you haven't already done so, add the option for visitors to your site to Digg your articles and content at the click of a button.
And if you haven't yet experimented with social networking like Twitter and Facebook, then give that a go too - because if you get picked up by a few influential people, then a surge in popularity could follow.
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