Facebook/Boo
Boo!
Today, a great world mystery was solved by Mike Isaac, a writer at tech news site AllThingsD.
Isaac unmasked the owner of Boo, “the world’s cutest dog.”
No, really. Boo is the world’s cutest dog. Google it. Or check out the book that came out last year.
According to Isaac, Boo belongs to Irene Ahn, a finance lead at Facebook. She joined the company in 2008 from Yahoo.
Ahn’s identity as Boo’s “mom” has never been revealed before. She’s used the stage name J.H. Lee to keep the spotlight on her dog.
Boo is known around the world with nearly 5 million Facebook fans. We spoke to Boo’s publicist at Chronicle Books, April Whitney, to get some more color.
Whitney says not many people get rich publishing books, but according to her, Boo’s first book was “pretty successful.”
The $12.95 title went to market last summer and has since been published in ten languages—Portuguese, Finnish, French, German, Norwegian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, and a Chinese-language edition sold in Taiwan.
Thanks to the success of Boo’s first book, he has a second that will be released soon called Boo: Little Dog In The Big City. It’s about Boo and his friend Buddy talking on their city, San Francisco, and it will also retail for $12.95.
Chronicle Books has also released a calendar for Boo, which sells for $13.99. In addition, Boo has a line of Gund stuffed animals coming out and an A-B-C book for children.
While Whitney didn’t confirm Ahn as the owner, she did talk a little bit about Boo’s owner. Boo and his owner live in San Francisco. She also says Boo’s owner never sought fame or fortune.
“She didn’t contact us, we contacted her when Boo only had 60,000 Facebook fans,” says Whitney. “It might appear to people like she’s creating all these things for Boo, but the only online presence she’s made for him is his Facebook page.”
Whitney says everything else that’s online about Boo, including his Twitter account, his YouTube videos, and his website, are fake.
Ok, now here’s the good part.