Queenstown Police's Facebook page has experienced a 1028% growth in "fans" following a story in yesterday's Otago Daily Times.
Queenstown Police intelligence analyst Constable Sean Drader said initially there were seven fans of its social networking site, set up in an effort to expand the net for offenders in the area.
By yesterday afternoon, the number of fans had increased to 72.
The page features video and still images of wanted or unidentified offenders - people were encouraged to contact the police if they knew the offender and it would also serve as a useful tool for shopkeepers, hoteliers and backpackers, particularly in Queenstown, Const Drader said.
"We had six or seven people [as fans] to start with - some were friends of mine, one of they guys was a victim and a few of them were cops. Now, we have 72 people who have put themselves as fans, which is quite a lot considering some of the big [corporate] ones overseas only had a few hundred."
Of those who had listed themselves as fans, 52% were female and 48% were male, but the most common group was men aged 25 to 34, followed by women aged 35 to 44.
The Facebook demographics were "slow to update" and still three days behind.
However, there were 419 hits the night the site featured on TVNZ, but further coverage on television and in the ODT meant it was likely the hits had also increased, he said.
He also expected "if or when" people were caught by the police, the site would grow in popularity, but also expected some of the videos to end up being passed on to fans' friends to view because they "appealed to people's sense of humour".
A situation like that could have occurred a couple of years ago when two men broke into O'Connells Shopping Centre, he said.
In that case, one of the men attempted to pick up his associate by the feet, resulting in the associate being dropped on his head.
Const Drader said while some people understood the idea of Facebook and knew how it worked, for others it would take some time to get their heads around it.
• Queenstown Police's Facebook page can be found by searching Queenstown Police using the Facebook search engine. You must register with Facebook to view the page, but you can remain anonymous through your username.
