A maths teacher's experiment to document the way social media posts can spread has gone viral, spreading around the world in a matter of days.
Paula Beare, who teaches at Harristown State High in Toowoomba, Queensland, wrote an open letter on May 20 calling for people to share her post for a presentation she had to make to Year 9 students about cyber safety.
"Next week I need to present to the Year 9 students about cyber safety and I wish to see how far this message will go based on my account's security settings," the letter read.
"Please help me by sharing this message as far as you can.
"I will aim to track the number of 'likes' and 'shares' and create a mathematical model as well as showing just how far something can go from a small Facebook account."
Two hours later the post had already started to travel.
"In less than 2 hours...207 shares and overseas already," Ms Beare wrote.
But it was just the beginning.
On Wednesday, the day she was due to present to her students, she commented on the post: "Over 70K shares, over 500 friend requests. ..and only three of these I knew.
"Reference to my project on a LinkedIn request and news articles published without talking to me," she wrote.
"I have a great hook for my lesson today, thank you everyone for your assistance. When marking dies down I will pull the results into a paper."
It has now been shared more than 73,000 times.
SBS News has contacted Ms Beare for comment.
