Hooray for Fiona the Hippo, Our Bundle of Social-Media Joy<br />Scientists at the zoo milked a hippo for the first time — “we had no idea what was in hippo milk before now,” Ms. Gorsuch said — so<br />that they could recreate the formula for Fiona’s bottles.<br />“We tell people, you have to find your Fiona, whatever that may be, and just tell the story.”<br />Ms. Curley said, “We have tried to say we are going to stop posting about her every day,<br />but we get 100,000 commenters telling us they must have updates.<br />One website called her “The Only Good Thing Left in This World.”<br />“Fiona is one of a kind, there’s no doubt about it,” said Thane Maynard, the director of the zoo, who talked to me<br />in the zoo’s giant boardroom, featuring a lacquered mahogany table and several figurines of rare African mammals.<br />Over the last year, Fiona has become something of an international cause célèbre, largely because of the efforts of Ms. Curley, the zoo’s communications director,<br />and her four-person team, who started posting Fiona’s every move to social media from the day she was born on Jan. 24 (prematurely, and perilously, but more on that later).<br />Everyone is so invested now.”<br />“People tell us all the time that Fiona is something everyone can agree on,” said Amy LaBarbara, the zoo’s coordinator for marketing and events.
