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- Diran Lyons gets only 47,000 views on his YouTube video, but someone on Facebook copies his video and got millions of views.
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- I'm guessing the Facebook accounts that posted the video were more established(?) They had a lot of people already paying attention to them, and so it was easier for them to get the video up-and-going (virally) more quickly.
To do
- I should really, really go through my viral infection simulator and document all of the variables that affect virality.
- Look for services that'll help get an article to go viral.
Major Ideas:
- the transmission mechanism is absolutely key
- altering the host's behavior is one way to help transmission
Computer viruses are broken into a few different classifications based on the method of transmission:
- Viruses: A virus is a small piece of software that piggybacks on real programs. For example, a virus might attach itself to a program such as a spreadsheet program. Each time the spreadsheet program runs, the virus runs, too, and it has the chance to reproduce (by attaching to other programs) or wreak havoc.
- E-mail viruses: An e-mail virus travels as an attachment to e-mail messages, and usually replicates itself by automatically mailing itself to dozens of people in the victim's e-mail address book. Some e-mail viruses don't even require a double-click -- they launch when you view the infected message in the preview pane of your e-mail software [source: Johnson].
- Trojan horses: A Trojan horse is simply a computer program. The program claims to do one thing (it may claim to be a game) but instead does damage when you run it (it may erase your hard disk). Trojan horses have no way to replicate automatically.
- Worms: A worm is a small piece of software that uses computer networks and security holes to replicate itself. A copy of the worm scans the network for another machine that has a specific security hole. It copies itself to the new machine using the security hole, and then starts replicating from there, as well.
Sources of Information:
Wikipedia:
General:
Viral Phenomenon
Memes:
Meme
Memetics
Internet:
Viral Marketing
Computer Viruses:
Computer Virus
Books:
The Selfish Gene (1976)
Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads Through Society
Journals:
Journal of Memetics
People:
Aaron Lynch (author of Thought Contagion and misc journal articles)
2015.01.05 - New Yorker - The Virologist
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/05/virologist
Goffman
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2012.03.27 - Why Some Ads Go Viral and Others Don't
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZVTwMUrGEA&feature=plcp
- in the past ads needed to be memorable so they'd have a storyline and then a surprise at the end.
- the problem is that nowadays people skip ads, so they don't arrive at the end of the ad.
- ads nowadays need to capture people in the first 5 seconds; so the surprise needs to come in the first 5 seconds
- after those 5 seconds, providing joy is a good way to keep people. humor actually ISN'T the best way to
- so actually the best thing to do is to provide joy, then take it away, then provide it again later
- sharing is a function of 2 things:
- 1) content of the ad; surprising is good (more likely to watch), but can't be shocking (less likely to share). EG the budweiser ad w/ naked people is surprising but also shocking; the rollerskating babies commercial is surprising but not shocking
- 2) motivations foster sharing. People share ads because they want to gain social capital, NOT because they're feeling altruistic.
Misc Thoughts:
- i should come up with a very comprehensive version of the zombie infection simulator that lets you play with different methods of infection and different scenarios. For example, right now one zombie can infect one person; what if a person could only be infected if there were more zombies than people in a certain radius of the person? What would that look like?
This is a follow-up to the discussion we were having about whether things like the "ice bucket challenge" can be orchestrated / predicted.
First, I highly recommend you guys check out the book "The Viral Video Manifesto". It talks a lot about why YouTube videos go viral. It was written by guys who orchestrated one of the earliest viral videos. It's a really good book.
After spending 10 minutes looking at past successful challenges I think I see some patterns:
- You want the challenge to be do-able by as many people as possible. Children should be able to do it as well as older people.
- You want the challenge to involve easily-found items, preferably things people will already own.
- You want the challenge to involve a surprising / novel use of those easily-found items.
- You want the challenge to be fun to watch someone take on. This usually means the person performing the challenge experiences some degree of discomfort / embarrassment / danger. But it shouldn't be too painful / dangerous (otherwise people won't try it and the virality suffers).
- You want the challenge to be scalable: people can do it in a less-intense way or more-intense way, depending on their preference.
- You probably don't want to try to get the 'challenge' craze going until a certain amount of time has elapsed from the last 'challenge' craze. The same idea applies in music / movies / videogames.
- There are probably other features that make something successful but I don't feel like spending more time thinking about it right now.
In fact, after thinking about it, I would not be surprised if the people who created the ice-bucket challenge deliberately attempted to mimic the challenges already seen on YouTube.
Anyway, consider these examples:
Partial List of YouTube challenges:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... F436BB687B
Planking
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=planking
The "Tequila Suicide"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq6iEKVLzWY
Note the similarities:
- It uses things that most people will have easy access to (salt, lemon, tequila)
- It uses those everyday items in a surprising / new way
Differences between this one and the ice-bucket challenge:
- The ice-bucket challenge was for a good cause, which probably helped its virality.
- The tequila suicide used tequila and lemons, which are probably less common than ice and a bucket.
- The tequila suicide was really only do-able by adults (21+), although you might argue that teens could upload vids of themselves doing it.
The Cinnamon Challenge
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ ... +challenge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXkGtJUP0WE
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