BuzzFeed News spoke with Breakr CEO Dil-Domine Leonares about his claims that the company was behind the success of Alex Christopher LaBeouf’s viral superstardom.
On Tuesday night, Dil-Domine Jacobe Leonares, the 29-year-old founder of a tech company called Breakr, told CNET that his company was responsible for the viral explosion of Texas teenager Alex Christopher LaBeouf and the Alex From Target meme over the weekend.
Breakr is a bootstrapped startup from Los Angeles. The company's website describes it as a platform that "connect fans to their fandom." It's currently in beta.
Leonares told BuzzFeed News that when the company started in November it was an anonymous location-based chatroom app. The company changed directions in June, he said, when a member of Australian YouTube band The Janoskians tweeted about it.
Leonares described in a LinkedIn post how Breakr started adding fuel to the fire by tweeting about Alex From Target to their bigger YouTube influencers. He told BuzzFeed News that Breakr's network of "fangirls" were instrumental in making sure LaBeouf became internet famous.
"It's one of those things where you put a good looking person in front of a bunch of fangirls and they're going to take it and run with it," Leonares said.
Leonares said the company discovered the photo of LaBeouf after it was first tweeted by UK Twitter user @Auscalum.
"One of our fangirls, Abby, who's based in the U.K., tweeted the photo," he said referring to @Auscalum, the first user to tweet the photo of LaBeouf.
@Auscalum said Tuesday night that she had never heard of Breakr and doesn't follow them.
"I don't work for breakr," she tweeted. "I dont even know what it is." @Auscalum said she found LaBeouf's photo on Tumblr.
Leonares said Breakr's three-person team and their social media network then drummed up support for it in a Google Hangout full of small-time content creators and Twitter users who work with the company. He likened their effect on the hashtag to when One Direction's millions of followers create trending topics.
Leonares refused multiple times to name specific members of Breakr's Twitter user network. Breakr's Twitter account has only 1,200 followers but he said they're strategic influencers.
