Why do things go viral?
by Patrick | Published in Crowd Science, Featured | 16 Comments
Back in September of 07 Mark Earls asked his readers why do you think that crocs, (the brightly colored plastic shoes) had become so popular? How did this viral trend spread? The answers to seemingly simple question reveal a lot about how the human brain works and how ideas spread between people without you even knowing it.
As you might expect, the answers from people who had bought them ranged from comfort through to “they are available in nice colors”. But are these really the thoughts that go through your mind before you buy these things? Is this why we decide in the first place?
Rationalizations
The truth is that more often than not you can’t pinpoint exactly why you buy something. But when asked you can certainly come up with an explanation of why you did. In fact our brain has to work this way to maintain the illusion of understanding the world. It would be very jarring to our sense of self and our linear logical view of the world if we couldn’t explain our actions – our Stone Age ancestors certainly didn’t want to be paralyzed into inaction by the appearance of cause not following effect. The brain solves this problem quite neatly by sometimes constructing the answers to these questions post-event.
- Why did I buy those crocs?
- Why did I decide to submit that article to stumble upon?
- Why did I repeat that one particular chant at the rock concert?
The decision making process to do any of these things is incredibly complex. How many times have you seen that ad on TV? Are the colors ones that have historically appealed to me? Are other people around you doing the same thing? What will others think of me if I wear those shoes?
It’s this last, hardest to measure point, that is the most important part to consider for getting an idea to go viral. Advertisements can fade into the background but are easy to notice if we wish. They can also be easy to measure from a historical perspective after an idea has gone viral. What’s much much harder to examine is the crowd behavior and dynamic flow of information that connects us all. Our social interactions and herd behavior is so prevalent that we don’t even see it anymore, and we certainly can’t go back and examine every small effect that added up to the final result of an idea going viral.
How things go viral
So we know decision making in social situations is complex but it goes some of the way to explaining why things go viral. But not how. The best examinations of how viral ideas spread are dissections of past events; like an archeologist describing the rise and fall of ancient Rome. For example Leo’s internet marking blog has a particularly good dissection of viral events from a social media perspective, and Malcolm Gladwell from a more general marketing perspective.
But for now let’s broadly define viral as something that’s reached enough penetrance in a crowd that it’s reached a critical mass from where it can touch most members of the crowd directly.
That’s really a no brainer, but how do we get to that point?
Influencers
Malcolm Gladwell examines the “critical mass of an idea” in his book The Tipping Point. Overall it’s an interesting explanation of how information moves through crowds and things go viral. There is much emphasis on influencers or super influencers in getting something to go viral; someone with a lot of reach or readers already can promote an idea and really enhance its chances of getting spread further. Bingo! The idea goes viral. No rocket science here - you are basically starting out very near critical mass already.
But of all the posts that reach the front page of Digg and become popular on StumbleUpon, how many of those do you think have followed this model?
Not as many as you might think. It’s an attractive model for Internet marketers (and sales people in general) because it’s easy to understand and presents a clear plan to copy to make something viral. Find a big Digg or StumbleUpon user and persuade them to promote your link. It’s the same model that’s been used for decades and you see it on TV every time a celebrity shills an otherwise generic perfume.
But if the super influencer is actually an anomaly amongst all the popular stories on Digg then how does viral information flow through crowds most of the time? I’ve touched upon this briefly in my previous post in crowd science follow the herd with the rock concert example. The crowd at a rock concert or a crowd at a sports arena is a great model for chaotic information flow between people, where chants and Mexican waves seem to start from out of nowhere and become popular. No super influencers here – the extroverts in the crowd have no reputation to preceded them.
What we see here is that information flowing through the crowd is much more chaotic, harder to predict. It’s also harder to see a rising trend until it has overtaken us, like the rise of crocs. What we really need is a set of principles that work in this chaotic flow of information to spread our ideas – the dream of marketers and bloggers alike: how to make something go viral.
Because we are entering a chaotic system we can never guarantee success for every viral campaign – there is always that element of unpredictability that can throw off our calculations, just like predicting the weather can be pretty much right a lot of the time but never always.
But to successfully deal with a chaotic system like human crowd behavior we need to discard the old ideas, the “top 10 tips” lists of viral marketing and instead focus on the one thing that’s essential for a viral idea.
The currency of Attention
You may follow the traditional approach and actually reach your super influencer, and they may promote your idea. But even this isn’t enough for it to go viral. In effect you have only connected to one person. If your idea can’t connect to the thousand other minds out there, then no virality for you.
So why does one human brain take your idea and then desire to pass it along to another human brain? The details of this transaction will change depending on if you are selling Pepsi on the street or your blog post on the internet, but there is one universal constant. Attention.
Attention is a currency and people spend it like money. Consider this – What happens if you give bad financial advice to your friends?
If you recommend the purchase of a meal at a specific restaurant, and it turns out to be terrible, then there is a backlash where your friend won’t “spend” any more attention on your recommendations. Extrapolating this out to the community at large, if no one listens to you – then it’s the same as if you never said anything in the first place.
The long-term consequences of giving bad advice to your friends are huge.
This is the same transaction that takes place when reading anything on the internet. If you’re writing a blog post step back and look at it. It may very well be good enough to entertain an individual person, but is it good enough for that person to want to ask their friends to spend their attention cash on it?
You should not be writing an article to just be helpful to the end user. It’s much more than that. You want your article or product to be one that your customers need to invest others attention in.
Your readers should feel like they have something to gain from passing along your article to their friends. They are your co-authors, reaping the benefits of your words, by being able to say, “I found that”.
People should feel like classical explorers, sailing across oceans of web pages, striving for unknown shores. And then they find your idea. It’s unique, it’s attention grabbing, and it’s theirs to grab and return home with like victorious conquerors!
The consequences of giving great advice to your friends are huge.
Concentrate on the currency of attention when crafting your work and you be closer to the next big thing. It’s attention that’s the essence of going viral, it’s the foundation of the connection between you and your audience, and your audience members to each other. If you have your own experiences of gaining the attention of others and going viral, we’d love to hear about them in the comments below. After all, I want to connect to you too.
If you want to follow the rest of the herd here at VE then subscribe to our RSS or Email updates. And for the record – I don’t own any crocs……. yet.
Original image by kaibara87 remixed by Patrick
February 2nd, 2009
February 2nd, 2009at 10:15 am(#)
Good stuff. I’ve never bought a pair of crocs, either. In part it’s because I try to live frugally. I never saw the utility in owning a pair. I might link this article to a post I have coming up if that’s alright with you.
February 2nd, 2009at 10:23 am(#)
Feel free to link it, quote it, use the image or what ever you want, as long as it gets a discussion going.
As a scientist, I’m a big believer that knowledge should be free – interacting with others and getting their points of view is really the best way for me (or anyone) to improve ideas and disprove faulty thinking.
You might also be interested in an article I’ll have coming up in a couple of weeks on how the biological response to money is a lot like the response to opiate drugs. Honestly, the brain never ceases to surprise me.
Patrick
February 2nd, 2009at 11:35 am(#)
Hey Patrick,
Very good post on “going viral”. I think that the point of trying to hit these ‘super influencers’ from a blogging perspective is that their “followers” will naturally pass the link for a variety of reasons.
Of course, the hard part is actually getting these guys to actually link up.
Most of us as bloggers, simply aren’t proactive enough to try to force the issue to in the very least, give us a chance for something to go viral. Most of us aren’t even working on the right platform to even have a chance of getting noticed in the first place. (that is why I mentioned inching your way up by getting noticed by folks on the same level as yourself, like a ladder.)
I have noticed some interesting things in terms of the blogging world. There appears to be the “super influencers” that will casually mention a link but the real power comes from those few under them that seem to have the most power in terms of moving mountains.
In other words, problogger links up to someone>>>>Maria Davis mentions it (and she gets thousands of visitors)>>>two of her folks link up>>>it winds up on the Warrior Forum>>>ect.ect.
So, what you have is 50-100 mini funnels going on from all over the place. And after that, the Power of Matthew kicks in…
As far as digg is concerned, I think that viral stuff on the social sites can be gamed far more easily.
Oh, and just because something gets popular, doesn’t necessarily mean that it will go viral. You can only game so far as a blogger (or in the case of a company, throw as much money as you want at it), but if it isn’t received well from the ‘underlings’ of these super influencers, then your popular item will fade as quick as a sunset in Alaska in the winter.
Anyway, that is how I see it currently. Of course, I could very easily be wrong in my sypnosis (I am way too often), but it is my viewpoint today (lol).
Great post…keep churning them out!
February 2nd, 2009at 1:02 pm(#)
Sites like Digg, Stumbleupon, Twitter (and ours – Vanno) are rich, real-time laboratories for performing controlled online crowd experiments. When the experiments are well designed and the analyses statistically appropriate, one gains very quantitative and actionable insight into crowd behavior. Which leads to the holy grail – the ability to predict what crowds will (and won’t) do.
The methodologies these sites use are closely guarded – you don’t see many published papers on the evolution of Digg’s ranking methodology, or on how Google delicately balances the accuracy of its searches with the need for ad revenue (think about it – if searches were perfectly accurate, you’d get all that you need in the first few results, and you wouldn’t click on ads. But if search results were too inaccurate, you wouldn’t use the tool at all).
As a former academic, I lament the fact that much of the “beef” behind qualitative catch-phrases like “viral”, “chaotic system”, “tipping point” or “herd behavior” is simply unavailable to researchers and commentators. But as a businessperson, I understand. It’s similar to the days of “data mining” and “expert systems”. While those phrases rolled off the tongues of academics and consultants, real progress was made by people who actually built the laboratories, and did the experiments – most notably Amex, Visa and MasterCard.
So I would suggest the following to those of you who want to move beyond the catch-phrases and the carefully packaged retrospective “analyses” that seem so conveniently convincing. Read the blogs and FAQs of the social media and social news sites themselves, and then dive into the forums and blogs that are obsessed with try to reverse engineer their algorithms. It’s one of those cases, where – to paraphrase an old saw – if you like sausage, you should definitely watch it being made.
February 2nd, 2009at 1:23 pm(#)
@Leo – Your analysis is spot on. I would certainly like to read more from you on your site about strategies and the information dynamics of reaching that second tier influencers that you touched upon in your article and here in your comments.
@Nick – I couldn’t agree more about examining the blogs and social media sites themselves. When I was researching this article I was astounded by the almost total absence of published academic material on this topic. Sociology journals, neuroscience journals, psychology journals etc etc had not much of use to add to what was already floating around the web.
It feels like an orphaned science.
Luckily business like google, digg, yours and some of the better marketing firms have picked up the slack (and the cash). I think understanding the nature of information flow through society is a lot more important than people realize.
Effective transfer of information is not just the key to a successful business, but a successful democracy, and in the end, a successful civilization.
I hope academia wakes up to what it’s missing here.
Patrick
February 2nd, 2009at 8:13 pm(#)
Well… you see.. and I just don’t get them – twitter, SU etc.- I understand them and I see how and why they work but I personally find them irritating … Not that I ever would be able to set myself aside from the crowd of followers (would be not really healthy to do so if you think about it long enough) …
February 2nd, 2009at 11:29 pm(#)
Hi Patrick,
A couple of years ago, I remember a blogger sharing a story about his kid turning to him while he was reading the newspaper aloud and saying, “That’s interesting, but is it useful,” (I wish I could remember where I read this so I could credit it…) and I think that’s the trap we so often fall into when it comes to social media–as the audience, we want to share this great “thing” without stopping to distinguish between interesting and useful.
Either can go viral, but it seems like stuff that meets both criteria is more likely to stick. Like Crocs–interesting because of the colors they come in, useful because they’re comfortable (or are rumored to be… I’ve never tried a pair on).
Anyway, I really enjoyed this piece! Thanks.
February 3rd, 2009at 10:15 am(#)
Hello Patrick,
At the beginning of the article you mention our stone age ancestors and how their brains evolved. Do you think that we can get some incite from them about what grabs our attention?
Is is things that can gives us some advantage over our neighbors? Things that increase our chance of survival? Things that increase our happiness. What I am looking for is the fundamental essence of what grabs our attention.
You mention one of them. Grabbing other people’s attention grabs our attention. That’s interesting because when I try to apply it to our stone age ancestors I cannot see the benefit of it. Why would stone age people want to grab the attention of other people? Maybe to manipulate them, or maybe to cooperate with them? Once they have the attention, then what?
Great article…I has really got me thinking and asking questions.
February 3rd, 2009at 11:20 am(#)
@Roman – Good question, and I think you probably have some of the answer already – co-ordination. Paleo-psychology is pretty much all just speculation, so take everything anyone says about what our ancestors were thinking with a grain of salt (including me!). However I can see great advantages in getting others attention and setting up a flow of information in a Stone Aged tribe. I go into this a bit in one of the previous articles in crowd science about why we gossip and the survival advantage that may have offered to our ancestors and modern primate groups alike.
Glad it got you thinking – feel free to ask more questions about anything that takes your fancy, as it’s the best way for both of us to learn new things!
Patrick
February 8th, 2009at 5:39 pm(#)
Group think and seemingly inconsequential human behavior are very hard to predict. If you haven’t read the book “Predictably Irrational” you really should check it out.
February 8th, 2009at 6:15 pm(#)
@Chris – I haven’t read it, but I have been reading Dan’s blog for quite awhile now – he’s really got some great insights into human behavior.
Highly recommended to those who haven’t discovered him yet:
http://www.predictablyirrational.com/
Cheers
Patrick
February 10th, 2009at 6:07 pm(#)
Hmmm, thinking about the kinds of things people do forward, it seems to me, people forward things that look like gifts: things that are fun, things that are valuable, things that are useful.
Also, people forward warnings.
Also, people forward things that extend conversations they’ve been in with the other person — news about a rock band we both like, ofr example.
Of course, we won’t forward things that we think the other person has already seen — that would waste their “attention currency” — so we end up forwarding things that appear novel within familiar categories.
February 18th, 2009at 12:45 pm(#)
Sounds like Purple Cow was right on…
February 18th, 2009at 3:50 pm(#)
Wonder if there have been any studies of viral marketing with those of us deemed to have social deficits like Asperger’s Syndrome. So much of what becomes popular we just don’t get. Is there anything viral in our “community?” If there were, would I even be able to recognize it?
February 26th, 2009at 3:27 pm(#)
After reading this article or blog (you name it) I can honestly say that I am happy to stumble upon it. Of course trough a good advise of a good friend. For now I can honestly just say that, time is chasing me. So till next time..
Regards from Slovenia,
denis
November 27th, 2009at 5:21 am(#)
I think the herd mentality has been with us throughout our evolution. When one person in the herd starts to get tired, this starts to influence the others and they proceed to get tired. If everyone was on completely different sleep cycles then some would get seperated from the herd and killed. There is strength in numbers and it helped us survive throughout our evolution. This combined with our need to belong are powerful influencers that can strongly impact our decisions. It is difficult to go against the crowd, especially when you have developed some trust with that crowd. Thanks for the though provoking article.