FOCUS' PopeAlarm Goes Viral With 135,000 Subscribers
Like many good ideas, it started as a solution to a personal dilemma. Kevin Cotter, Director of Web for FOCUS, wondered, “What if a pope was elected in the middle of the night? I wouldn’t be able to watch the announcement live. The best way to be woken up would be a text message.” Kevin began searching online to see if anyone was providing such a service. The answer: no one. What followed was a week that will go down in FOCUS lore as the project that was “PopeAlarm.com.” The goal of the project was encompassed by its tagline: “When the smoke goes up, you’ll know what’s going down.” The plan was pretty simple. FOCUS would set up a website that would allow people to submit an email and mobile phone number. A few staff members would monitor the live stream of the chimney on the Sistene Chapel during voting hours each day of the conclave (roughly 3 a.m.-1 p.m. MST). When a staff member spotted white smoke, FOCUS would send out a text and/or email to those who signed up. The hope was that somewhere between 18,000-25,000 people would sign up. The website launched at midnight on Saturday morning—just three days before the Conclave began and four days before the eventual election of the Pope. The news didn’t take long to spread. In the first 24 hours, there were over 100,000 page views on PopeAlarm.com and over 22,000 people signed up, fueled mostly by social media. On Tuesday, before the first vote of the Conclave took place, more than 44,000 people were registered. However, as the first black smoke was released from the Sistine Chapel, both Catholics and the media began to give even more attention to PopeAlarm. The Associated Press released a story that was syndicated to most of the major newspapers across the country. Thousands of registrants began pouring in each hour. [For a more thorough list of media coverage of PopeAlarm.com, click here] On Tuesday evening, Diane Sawyer featured PopeAlarm.com to close out her program, ABC World News. On Wednesday, March 13, a team of FOCUS staff arrived at the FOCUS National Office at 2:45 in the morning to be ready for the second vote in case the smoke was white. Black smoke went up at 4:40 a.m., indicating that the Cardinals had not yet elected a Pope on the second or third vote. Soon after, Renee Montagne of NPR opened the show “Morning Edition” with an introduction to PopeAlarm.com.
When the all was said and done, it was incredible to see what happened in just five short days as PopeAlarm.com went viral online:
It was a great day for FOCUS and an even better one for our Church. Check out CBS Denver’s story on PopeAlarm.com
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Just past noon of that day, it was time for smoke to be released again from the chimney after the fifth vote. This time, it was white! As a crew from the local news station filmed (see the video below), FOCUS staff began sending texts and emails out to those who registered on PopeAlarm.com. We then watched as Pope Francis was announced. It was an amazing moment after notifying so many people, but more importantly the FOCUS staff was overwhelmed by the fact that we had a new leader and spiritual father.
