The Ellen Degeneres and Wendy’s chicken nugget re-tweet
competition is a very interesting social media case to look at and compare. The
biggest difference between these two tweets is that one is popular and one is
viral. Ellen is obviously a very popular celebrity who took a selfie with lots
of other popular celebrities at the Oscars. This tweet got so many retweets
because it was so popular and people actually knew the celebrities and liked
the content. However, I do think it’s important to note that Ellen did have an
incentive as she said at the Oscars that she wanted to try and break the record
of having the most retweets of a photo. The Wendy’s chicken nugget tweet got so
many retweets not because it was popular, but because it went viral. Carter
Wilkerson wanted a year supply of chicken nuggets and because Wendy’s gave him
an incentive publicly, people retweeted his tweet and made the post go viral. I
think that Seth Godin explains the difference between popular and viral best on
his blog. He says that “Popular work resonates with the people who already like
what you do. Viral work is what happens when the audience can’t stop talking
about what you did.”
Comparing
Justin Bieber’s “Baby” video and Psy’s “Gangnum Style” video also gives some
insight into the difference between popular and viral. Justin Bieber is
obviously a very popular artist and most people know who he is. In fact, Justin
Bieber had a fan base of 31.8 million twitter followers as of 2012 according to
Mashable and Psy only had a fan base of 1.7 million Twitter followers in 2012.
This is because he became known because of his viral “Gangnum Style” video.
However, Justin Bieber was popular before his “Baby” video was released. You
can view Mashable’s comparison of the two here.
Overall,
these two comparisons show the power of social media, whether you’re popular or
not. Everyone and anyone has a voice on social media and who knows, maybe
something you post could go viral, resulting in more popularity for you. 
I really liked your comparison to Justin Bieber and Psy and the Ellen and chicken nugget tweet case. I think that it really pulled the overall argument about being popular and viral into a whole new light. I also really liked how you kind of gave a definition of what popular work looks like compared to that of a post going viral.
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