Piccadilly unconfirmed

sherlock-overflow-error:

roadswewalk:

TL;DR: that image was originally part of the article, and was later removed.  There is no hidden agenda.

I’ve been following this because from what I saw of the page source yesterday, what I know from past work in digital marketing, and the fact that the Facebook effect stopped working after a few hours, the inclusion of the Miss Me image was definitely intentional.

Here’s why: the first version of the article included that image instead of the interactive slider you see now.  (I finally thought to look at the history instead of the code - a lesson I should have learned from Sherlock?)  Courtesy of archive.org’s Wayback Machine:

There were four versions of the page scraped on 16 January, so they made a few updates, but the major change was replacing the static callback to the Sherlock promotion with the fancier widget that’s up now.  It makes sense that the fancy part may not have been ready for initial release, so they used the most famous recent event at this location to promote it, until it was.

See the old and new versions for yourself:

First version

Introduction of the interactive slider image

There were additional changes made to either the page metadata (or the configuration settings of the article in BBC’s Facebook tools) since the effect was first reported.  This is why it no longer works when people share on FB.

Sorry, but I think this is debunked.  Previously, 
I have only posted inconclusive evidence, not suggested conclusions, and as far as
I know few people have seen those posts; but apologies if anyone has been misled.

Tagging the last poster I remember, please spread this information, @sherlock-overflow-error

Thank you very much, @roadswewalk. Signal boost this, guys.