\”Without a specific reason for the consumer to behave, without a reward or benefit, the overwhelmed user will refuse.\” – Seth Godin

Everything on the internet has the potential to be infective.

Traditional marketers have spent fortunes in attempts to replicate contagious behavior across the web. Virality, however, is not achieved via replication but rather through the application of something unique, interesting, and that which is easily transmutable.

Nobody likes being told what to do. This is why disruptive marketing through television or the radio no longer works. For something to go viral, it must intrigue as well as add value to the person spreading it.

I made an inherent mistake when building my first social software, Shuzak.com. Shuzak was a social network built to facilitate networking amongst techies – and it did that job quite well; however, it provided no value to any user willing to share it amongst their friends. Why would a user share my application with others? Why should they do the marketing for me? I provided them no incentive.

Then, most recently, I launched an experiment in building a viral application. I created a twitter application (http://flamewhale.com/) with one simple purpose, to perpetuate insults. Flamewhale sends random insults to random people over twitter. If you hate twitter, you will love this application even more.

I announced FlameWhale on Hacker News and within an hour the application was used so many times that it went off line for several days due to excessive Twitter API usage.

Users who received insults via FlameWhale were tempted to engage in a two-way conversation in retaliation or defense. A majority of FlameWhale victims anonymously tweeted their own insults to random twitter users, thus making the process a viral-loop.

Like anything worth talking about; some liked it, some loved it and some hated this application. And that\’s why it spread.

This is what Seth Godin has to say about viral marketing:
No one \”sends\” an idea unless:
a. they understand it
b. they want it to spread
c. they believe that spreading it will enhance their power (reputation, income, friendships) or their peace of mind
d. the effort necessary to send the idea is less than the benefits
No one \”gets\” an idea unless:
a. the first impression demands further investigation
b. they already understand the foundation ideas necessary to get the new idea
c. they trust or respect the sender enough to invest the time

A key element in the spread of ideas is their visual element. iPods and visual styles spread faster in the real world than ephemeral concepts. Pictures and short jokes spread faster online because the investment necessary to figure out if they\’re worth spreading is so tiny.

So here is what I learned: Make your application easy to roll out by removing yourself as the bottleneck. Don\’t ask for excess information. Don\’t disrupt the user flow.

Viral marketing cannot be replicated once its hosts have become immune to the idea. No one will make another million launching the million dollar homepage. No one will ever robot dance their way to the top spot on YouTube. Viral marketing can be modeled, but it cannot be cloned.

Author Bio: Jawad Shuaib is a Web 2.0 Software Developer and also the co-founder of Budget Electronics – a wholesale cell phone and computer accessories provider.

Category: Computers and Technology
Keywords: software, web 2.0, internet, php, viral marketing