What the F is going on with whales?? (A case study in social media monitoring)

Aaron, Upwell's captain of data and monitoring, starts each morning by opening Radian6, where he's got a fancy dashboard that tracks social mentions of all the ocean topics we're keeping our eyes on.

Don't worry if this makes your head spin. It makes mine spin. That's why we keep Aaron around. 

This morning, Aaron saw a huuuuge spike on the whale chart.

(sidenote: It looks like a fin. cool.)

What? Whales are so popular today!!! What is going on!?!  Did the rainbow whale go viral? (sidenote: yes, it did, and we take all the credit.)

Aaron dove into the data. What were people saying? 

Apparently he who must not be named decreed that twitter was down. Does the Twitter Fail Whale count as more attention for the ocean?

Here's a graph that shows how much of the whale conversation spike was due to the Twitter Fail Whale. 

Morals of the story: not all whales created equal, Aaron is graph ninja.