Rusty the panda stokes Twitter frenzy
A red panda has sparked a vast Twitter manhunt after going AWOL from Washington DC’s National Zoo.
Rusty’s absence from his enclosure prompted the zoo to issue a tweet seeking information on his whereabouts, saying: ‘We are looking for a missing red panda, a male named Rusty. He was last seen at 6 p.m. last night.’
Following this the social media site duly went into overdrive with a welter of hashtags and more than 65,000 mentions, appearing bearing #redpanda, #findrusty, and #rusty hashtags.
This led to direct reports of sightings from the DC area, including one resident of the Adams Morgan district who tweeted a direct sighting of the furry absconder: “Red panda in our neighborhood! 20th NW and Biltmore. Please come save him!"
To better coordinate efforts another resident even live tweeted updates from the search operation.
Twitter spokesperson Elaine Filadelfo, told CNEt: "What an adventure for Rusty! There were around 65,000 mentions of him today. For a few hours this morning, he was even more popular than Amanda Bynes and North West."