This was followed two days later by a VocalTweet where she sang the lyrics from the tweet in the voice of Twilight Sparkle. One of the more popular shout-outs was a tweet on March 7, 2012, where she acted as Twilight performing a short free-style rap, ending the tweet with the term "Twilightlicious". The voice actress of the main character Twilight Sparkle, Tara Strong, occasionally gives shout-outs to bronies on her Twitter account. Created in January 2011 by 23-year-old college student Shaun Scotellaro, Equestria Daily receives more than 175,000 visits a day. Among the first MLP hub sites to emerge were Ponychan, a spin-off imageboard dedicated to hosting MLP-related media, and Equestria Daily, a portal news site for all things related to the fandom, from artworks and fan fiction to news, episode reviews, and interviews. The sudden and overwhelming influx of MLP-related media on 4chan soon led to an internal division between bronies and those who disapproved of the fandom, which in turn gave rise to the expansion of the fandom outside of the imageboard. Since then, the fandom has exploded across the Internet. After the second episode aired on October 22nd, threads about ponies started to boom on 4chan, gaining the show fans outside of its target demographic.
The article and related threads generated /co/'s initial interest in the show, spurring several members to watch the first episode. Threads on 4chan's comics and cartoon board, /co/, attacked the article for this reason.
On October 19, 2010, Cartoon Brew wrote an article about the show titled "The End of the Creator-Driven Era in TV Animation", which had an alarmist tone. On October 10th, 2010, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic was aired as part of the debut of the new television network, The Hub, which replaced Discovery Kids.