The story of Balloon boy Falcon Keene was played live all over the country thanks to the real-time web. Ten years ago, would this story have gotten as big as it did today? I don’t think so. Sure it would have been played (to a limited mid-day audience) on live television and the radio, but the web and it’s real-time sharing capabilities, really propelled this story into the limelight. Then the social Web took over with #balloonboy hashtags, and now it’s become the latest meme, with people joking about taking off in a balloon to get doughnuts, or hiding in the attic.