Virality (of Stories, Videos, Businesses, Diseases, etc.)

Both with Snapchat and with Facebook the viral phenomenon began with three "cool kids". With Facebook it was Harvard, where the fact that people at Harvard were using it was likely to get people at other schools to use it, and with Snapchat it was a chic high school in los Angeles, where the fact that it was used at this cool school would make it more likely to be used at other schools.

Misc examples

Diran Lyons gets only 47,000 views on his YouTube video, but someone on Facebook copies his video and got millions of views.
- →
- 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.
Lindybeige talking about his first viral video
- He makes a bunch of very interesting observations that I should summarize here.
- He, like with Diran, had some other sites copy his video on their sites instead of resharing it from YouTube. He said some of the sites edited his video as well. I think I've seen that myself, where a site will remove anything extraneous.

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

GOFFMAN, W., and NEWILL, V.A. Communication and epidemic processes. Proc. Royal Soc. A 298 (May 1967), pp316-334.
GOFFMAN, W. Mathematical approach to the spread of scientific ideas. Nature. 212 (Oct. 1966), pp449-452
GOFFMAN, W. A Mathematical Method for Analyzing the Growth of a Scientific Discipline (JACM 18(2) April 1971 pp12-28
GOFFMAN, W., & HARMON, G. Mathematical approach to the prediction of scientific discovery. Nature, 229, 1971 103-104.
GOFFMAN, W., & WARREN, K. S. Scientific information systems and the principle of selectivity (pp. 22-25). New York, NY: Praeger Publishers. 1980
GOFFMAN, W., & KATZ, M. J. Performance of ontogenetic patterns. Philosophy of Science, 48, 1981 438-453.

Thales Teixeira

"To Zap or Not to Zap: How to Insert the Brand in TV Commercials to Minimize Avoidance." Marketing Intelligence Review (forthcoming).
"Emotion-induced Engagement in Internet Video Ads." Journal of Marketing Research (April 2012).
"The New Science of Viral Ads." Harvard Business Review 90, no. 3 (March 2012): 25-27.
"Moment-to-moment Optimal Branding in TV Commercials: Preventing Avoidance by Pulsing." Marketing Science

2012.03.27 - Why Some Ads Go Viral and Others Don't
- 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.
2017.11 - Masters of Scale - Interview with Peter Thiel
- Peter mentions that he had a formula he would pay attention to: Ut = U0 * e^(xt), where U0 is the number of Initial users, t is some duration of time since the first users have signed up, and and Ut is the number of users at time t. The idea is to then watch "x", which is the rate of your exponential growth. I'm guessing another way to think of it is, "At what rate are all of your users, on average, getting new users to sign up?".

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