This is definitely not a thorough (or deeply useful) investigation of the topic.
As I read it, there are three types of transfer identified here and two modifiers.
- Word of mouth
- Demonstration (intentional or not)
- Network effects (N.B. this is a problem as well as an opportunity)
And the modifiers:
- User incentives (cash-for-shares)
- Central sharers (e.g. Let's Plays, celebrities on Instagram)
That seems like a better framework than the one provided. We can see that Pokemon Go was demonstration and word-of-mouth with central sharers, Uber was demonstration and word-of-mouth with incentives, and Instagram was network effects with central sharers.
Building this up into a proper model with more elements would be interesting. Additives like "controversy" and "media appeal" would probably be key to identify.
I like the way you broke down things. People at a16Z have some sort of a network effect playbook for different types of Network Effects. I was listening about this in one of their podcasts.
Anyone have any really good sources to learn to think about virality?
I'm getting a few insights reading this (e.g. demonstration virality now seems stupid obvious but I had never thought about it before ), but I'd go a little deeper and have no clue where to start.
I've tried several different Google searches but came up with mostly garbage.
First you have to separate out network effects (recently called "the platform stack") from virality. The former (not the one you asked for) is this stuff:
There's a slew of charlatans that will want to help you use FB to make things "go viral" (you'll find some of those pitches on SlideShare), but first, once you know what it is, you can begin to sort the wheat from the chaff for yourself...
I'd love to see some proper data on "incentivized word of mouth". When I engage in that, it's almost always normal word of mouth plus a mutual cash-grab. Compare how often you decide "I should spread the word about this for money" to how often you go "This is really great. Oh! Let me recommend you and we'll both save a couple bucks." Hell, I've told existing users "I want this app, recommend me and we'll grab some cash?"
I guess it might still improve retention for the new users, which is probably Uber's goal, but I'm skeptical about whether incentives promote more sharing, or just raise the price of existing shares.
>I guess it might still improve retention for the new users, which is probably Uber's goal, but I'm skeptical about whether incentives promote more sharing
I first used Uber because I was with someone that was already a user and we were going to catch a cab... He would have just done it himself, but because of the incentive, I downloaded instead so our shared ride would cost us less.
I'm always amused when I see an article like this at the top of Hacker News. I come here for interesting technical articles and discussion on computer science topics, not this sort-of marketing noise^H^H^H^H^H advice targeted at "entrepreneurs".
I wonder how much overlap there is between upvoters of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12539522 (L4 microkernels...) and this article (Five Types of Virality). It would be very interesting if Hacker News could release some anonymized voting information so we could visualize our community's various clusters.
actually, I submitted this post and have nothing to do with Greylock.
I am an entrepreneur myself trying to grow my product. Hence, I think about virality all the time. The audience here is also interested in growth as is clear by the upvotes.