A Social Experiment -- Will it Work? I'm going to make someone I don't know FAMOUS

I can't tell if it's gonna be successful or not, because I need more details. First of all, who are these 100, 000 people that you will going to invite on that site? And what do you mean by their original song? I got to say, the idea is intriguing, but I would love if you could develop on your post. I hope it goes viral. Would be interesting to watch.

The 100,000 people are going to be from StumbleUpon traffic.

So they would be interested in "new music" as that would be the group I'm targeting.

When I say original song I mean they wrote and they played the song, not a cover of someone elses material.

Since the stumbleupon users are frequent users of social media I think it could spread.

I guess that is taking 15 minutes of fame to the extreme.

Write a couple of press releases as well.

Hi LMC,

Sounds like fun.

I think it has good potential. And yes, I would say it would be possible to take someone from obscurity to making them 'famous' that way.

Look at Justin Bieber.

So are you planning on becoming a music agent?

LMC Records...

Cheers,

John

This is very outside-the-box and I like it! It sounds like lots of fun!

When is the day? Do you have the date set?

I think it will work if the person you chose is attractive to the public whether he/she is good-looking or a good singer.

Sounds really cool. Better try it. if it works that will be really good for both of you.

They day is November 30th.

The key is going to be making the spreading of the musician easy, it's got to be a click of the button.

The goal is to do this once a month. If it does work, then we are set because the press will follow and next month I won't need to force the first 100,000.

Post a link to it in the off topic section here, i'd love to spread it on my personal FB. I'm sure others would as well.

So how did it go. Did it succeed?

Sounds like a plan. If it succeeds, sign me up for trail #2.

Will do...

got to think of a good name for the site.

Will you use a Youtube video? I would advise to send people directly to youtube video, they could add it to favorites, comment, etc...the video would gain popularity quickly that way on Youtube. But it has to be original in some way. The person has to be either VERY talented or otherwise differ from all the other singing Youtube videos.

it will be a youtube video but embedded on my site.

Reminds me of the days I dabbled into BitTorrent marketing. No matter if the experiment succeeds or not, you will get some very valuable insight.

Go for it and please let us know how it works out.

Best regards,
George

I don't think there really is anything to do to help,

maybe help pick out some viral brandable names.

Sounds cool, I will be looking forward to see what happens. With some of the stuff that has gone viral before I would guess that it is for sure possible.


Chris

Really interesting idea, man. Keep us posted at Nov 30. Btw, if it's going to be successful, would you mind doing it again for some of us maybe. I found a 13 years old girl who can sing beautifully in opera music

I have run a few very successful viral campaign myself and this sounds like a brilliant idea. As long as you can get the idea across to others in an effective way, and you make the referral process very simple, it sounds like it could work to me.

Good Luck with it.

Will

I really like the concept of this. I have a few suggestions for you

I would empower the use of Twitter and facebook on the day

I would use the live event widget for this Live Stream - Facebook Developers

I would add share this mp3 to twitter on the Website or the YouTube video.

Would also broadcast live on Justin.tv Let users participate in live chat.

Would also add a fb share button to virally add the video to peoples Facebook profiles.

And ask people to tweet and fbshare/like the event.

This is what I would do if I was setting this up

Good luck hope it goes well

Sounds cool...

Keep us posted on the results.

Absolutely invoke facebook, tweets etc. as mrbrown123 says - make it as stupidly easy as possible to share it.

You could also monitor it early on and if it's taking off try to get some press on it via local or national sources... even if it just hits a trending section it could really blow up at that point.

This is attempted everyday. It's called the entertainment business. They take an artist and attempt to make them famous with viral marketing. It goes far beyond the beginnings of the Internet. In the end, talent usually is the key.

Sounds like fun! I'm in! Who's that guy you're talking about?

Not if she can't sing it won't.

who is she.

Cool idea!

What about:

do you deserve 15 minutes (dot) com

or something like that.

Greg

If you get the chance have a look at a book by Malcolm Gladwell called The Tipping Point. Basically you need to find about 5 or 6 'opinion formers' because once they say the person needs to be famous, the masses tend to suck it up. In his book he talks about Paul Revere's famous ride through the night when the British arrived. Apparently someone else also tried to raise the alarm at the same time, yet he got nowhere because he wasn't as socially important as Revere was.

There was an experiment in the art world some years ago. An author made up a character of an artist and started banding their name around the art world. He often asked people who were full of their own self importance what they thought of this artist with pretty much most of them saying how they loved his work. Eventually evryone started talking about this artist. The problem was, was that no one had ever seen any work by him and his reputation grew because no one wanted look like they were out of touch with the latest trends in the art world.

Now if you can find some of those, you stand a really good chance of making this work, especially if they get to make it sound like they discovered your person.

Whether it works or not depends if the artist any good or not, plus how targeted the list is. If you send a death metal artist to a list of waltz lovers, probably not gonna work too well.

It's marketing, remember? Targeting is always the key.

sooooo............ it is now 01/12/2010! At least where I am

So what happened?