Brother Orange and the lost iPhone: a sweet tale of a digital manhunt

When Matt Stopera, from US online outlet BuzzFeed, wrote about the mysterious posts turning up on his photo stream he started what some said was the "most romantic story of the Lunar New Year".

Stopera said he lost his iPhone in a bar in New York a year ago and was told that the photos might be from someone in China who now had the device. Staff from an Apple store helped him delete the content on the iCloud and remotely lock the phone.

Stopera then posted some of the photos taken by the new user in an article called "Who is this man and why are his photos showing up on my phone?"

"I'll probably never see my orange tree friend again," he wrote at the end of the post. "At least I can scare people with this story."

But that was just the start of the tale. A microblogger translated most of Stopera's article and reposted it, quickly attracting millions of views in China.

Internet users launched a nationwide manhunt to track down the "new owner", dubbed "Brother Orange".