A new record has been set for the most comments on a single Facebook item: over 1 million responses. On October 30, 2011, Tracey Hodgson of the U.K. made a post on the Facebook Page for the Zynga freemium game FFG Pioneers. By January 31 (three months later), the post had accumulated 1,001,552 comments.
The comments kept coming, but 1,001,552 is the number that the Guinness World Records (GWR) approved, so that’s the new record. Curiously though, the post and its comments are no longer on the Facebook Page. Thankfully, GWR got a screenshot (pictured above).
The record was achieved by less than 107 Facebook users (that’s the number of Likes the Page had at the time the record was set). Even if every one of those users did participate, it means they each made an average of 9360 comments. The 1 million figure almost doubles the previous record set for a post by Roberto Esposito of Italy last year.
“I started to get into Frontierville after my daughter started playing it using my Facebook account,” Hodgson told GWR. “I began to play myself, and then got involved in helping with the game’s community groups as an administrator. My friend Nattie Murphy saw the previous record and suggested I try to break it - it sounded like a great idea for our group to show what we are capable of when we work together. We had over 107 help, but many left the record group because of the constant notifications, but there were a core group of four people including Nattie adding comments. It feels fantastic to have been able to break the world record for our community - while I don’t actually play Frontierville anymore, I’ve met some great people through playing it and love to be able to help them enjoy the game still.”
In other words, this wasn’t just an interesting or controversial post that got people talking: the goal was to break the record. Still, you have to appreciate the dedication, even if it the actual discussion wasn’t in any way valuable.
GWR organization currently recognizes seven records for Facebook use (you can apply at guinnessworldrecords.com/apply):
- Most comments on a wall post (minimum: 5,000)
- Most comments on a status update (minimum: 5,000)
- Most comments on a picture (minimum: 5,000)
- Largest group (minimum: 2,000,000)
- Largest fan page (minimum: 2,000,000)
- Most likes on a status update (minimum: 5,000)
- Most likes on a picture (minimum: 5,000)
GWR has over 730,000 Likes on its Facebook Page.
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