Minutes after the first message appeared, the same letters, in the same order, began turning up on the fan pages of Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and hilariously, Justin Bieber. Each letter was displayed in the space where a profile picture would normally be, next to a posted comment. As each Facebook user posted their comments in the right order, the message came to life.
Seeing the unauthorized messages pop up on their feeds, the page administrators began furiously scrubbing the pages. Palin's message lasted almost an hour. Beck's was gone in just one minute.
By the end of the hour, the pranksters had hit the conservative network and its two high-profile commentators, all to varying degrees of success. They hit The Daily Show's page too, willful participants in the faux-feud between the two Comedy Central hosts.
The idea never gained much traction as a client project, so Greenspan took it outside the halls of the agency and decided to use the concept for his own amusement. He recruited Baker and Adrain, and, offering up his own page for the experiment, declared that anyone who succeeded in posting a vertical message on his page with profile pictures would get a free dinner. But his new teammates had another idea— why not "bomb" the pages of famous people?
It was then the plan was hatched, and the practice of “letterbombing” was born.
First they registered the URL. It was available, much to their surprise. Then Adrain created and posted the profile letters, which are hosted on the site as a .zip file, still available for anyone to use.
"Now who should we bomb?" they asked themselves, zeroing in on those with whom they had "an ideological difference with."
"Glenn Beck was an easy target. Sarah Palin was an easy target. Fox News was an easy target," he says. But they didn't want to just write something stupid, like "Glenn Beck Sucks," or "Sarah Palin Is the Devil."
What about "Keep the Fear Alive"?
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