Going viral on the Web

Dear Gentle Reader,

The image above is a recreation, sort of like Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, of the Influenza (Flu) virus which swept around the world in 1918.

World War I, the War to End All Wars, had not even ended. It was spring when the first wave of this virus hit.

The 1918 Influenza virus would sweep around the world, essentially in three waves, between 1918 and 1920.

Current estimates of the total mortality from the 1918 Influenza virus are between 50 million to 100 million people (sourced here).

In percentage terms that equates to 2.5% to 5% of the world's population who died as a result of contracting this particular strain of the flu. The infection rate of this pandemic was obviously much higher than the mortality rate, as the disease continued to propagate.

When people talk about "going viral" on the web, they generally do not talk about people dying.

Hopefully they are not talking about their hard drive or their computer dying.

When peoople speak of "going viral" affectionately, they are usually talking about an infection of interest in a thing--an image, a video, a song, a website, a posting, or a download.

On the subject of "going viral" a friend wrote an excellent description which I would like to share.

OxyJen (now nicknamed Toxina) wrote:

For something to go viral on the internet, its content needs to be so compelling that people spontaneously start alerting their friends to it.

The spontaneity is crucial because that next generation of friends must also--independently--judge the content to be so compelling that they spontaneously pass it along.

This effect propagates through countless stages of people who don't know the content provider and thus aren't willing to do him/her any favours. The content itself has to secure their full enthusiasm.

This effect is actually really similar to how books become bestsellers. Marketing and publicity don't sell books (although they get the books looked at in the store, which is very valuable); only word-of-mouth generated by the quality of content sells books.

Your best chance of going viral comes from continuing to provide the best content you can, and continuing to lure people to your blog by interacting in an engaging manner on their blogs (this is marketing), and--if you're looking for a mercenary angle to help things along--choosing topics that are likely to resonate with, strongly amuse, intellectually interest, or emotionally inflame large numbers of people.

Pretty bright person, that OxyJen. She knows what she is talking about. One of her posts had 858 hits in just one day... going viral, that's what we are talking about...

When we read what OxyJen wrote, it is obvious, but also because OxyJen says it so well.

I had never really considered the importance of the spontaneity aspect and the compelling nature of the spontaneity before.

I suspect, after reflection, that spontaneity is also important because if something is so compelling we will spontaneously send it without even thinking through the appropriateness of sending that thing along.

Personally, I cannot wait for OxyJen's first book to be signed by a publisher because I cannot wait to read it. That book will, I am sure, be excellent. So, OxyJen's agent... get selling.

Tschuess,

Chris, Regina, and Pommes (learning to read in anticipation of the happy book purchase)