What determines if something is "viral"?

Hey windrider07,

I see you've been following that discussion we had that other day into practice .

Here's an awesome post a colleague of mine wrote a while ago, in response to the same question on Quora.com. It's mostly a paraphrase of Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Poin--an excellent book to read on virality, if you have the time.

I'll quote the post here and include the link to the question after it, just in case you want to read the other responses.

--


"So, your mission is to spread an infection, eh? There are 3 things you need to know: Stickiness, contagiousness and medium.

There is no simple, clear-cut answer to how virality works. If we could predict in advance what would go viral, we'd be able to make everything viral. So there's always the possibility that you play all your cards "right" and still not get the amazing results you were hoping to get.

It's helpful to use the analogy of epidemics. "Viral", after all, comes from the word virus, and making something go viral is equivalent to spreading an infection.

There are 3 things that influence how things go viral (I'm stealing these ideas from Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point)

1: The stickiness of the virus. AIDS is sticky. If you've got it, you've got it for life. The common cold is not very sticky. You get it, but then it "wears off". If you want to make something more sticky, I suggest reading "Made To Stick" by Dan and Chip Heath. (Off the top of my head, it involves making things Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional and you have to tell a Story. Here's a great summary of the book: Summary of Made to Sticky by Chip & Dan Heath)

2: The contagiousness of the virus. The common cold is more contagious than AIDS. You can catch it just by being exposed to it. AIDS on the other hand, requires that you have unprotected sex or direct blood contact (through sharing needles). If you want to make something more contagious, you have to engineer it such that it's easy to spread.

3: The medium through which the virus is spread. The common cold spreads much faster during the holiday season, when lots of people are gathered together. AIDs spread faster in communities where people have lots of unprotected sex or share needles.

So you'll have to analyse of all this and make sense of what you're working with. What is your product, what is your idea? How do you refine it to make it as sticky and memorable as possible, so that it lingers in people's minds? How do you get lots of people talking about it?

Networks are unequal. You'll want to find out who are the high influencers, and win their favour. If you can get George Takei to share something on Facebook, you're going to do great. (But is that particularly what you want? You have to find out which specific target audience you want to reach, and you'll have to immerse yourself in it, make sense of the variables...)

Seth Godin describes these influencers as Sneezers, and he breaks them down into Promiscuous Sneezers and Powerful Sneezers.

"The paradox of the powerful sneezer is that he can't be bought. Every time a powerful sneezer accepts a bribe in exchange for spreading a virus, his power decreases."

So the only real way to create something viral is to create something that's so damn good, so interesting, so compelling that powerful sneezers in social networks feel obliged to share it. It has to create social value for the people sharing it. The first few people who shared Gangnam Style did it because it was funny, ridiculous, interesting, amusing, catchy.

You can't make something viral just by dipping it in Viral Sauce. You have to go deep into the DNA of the virus that you want to spread, and make sure that it's a right fit for the people you want to spread it to, and the medium it's going to be spreading in. And then you have to pray, because it might still fail.

Sounds tough? That's because it is. All you can do is keep creating content, do lots of trial and error (especially error), and enjoy the occasional superstar success.

Above all, the fundamental thing about going viral necessitates building an amazing audience that trusts, respects and admires you.

See: Unleashing The Ideavirus, by Seth Godin (Page on Sethgodin)"


You can find the original question and read the other responses here.