Comments on: The Science of Viral Marketing http://blog.simeonov.com/2007/11/30/the-science-of-viral-marketing/ Simeon Simeonov on entrepreneurship, innovation & venture capital Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:31:28 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Viral Dictionary « HighContrast http://blog.simeonov.com/2007/11/30/the-science-of-viral-marketing/#comment-17088 Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:54:48 +0000 http://simeons.wordpress.com/2007/11/30/the-science-of-viral-marketing/#comment-17088 [...] new site launched over the weekend and the viral dictionary caught my attention–I guess the science of viral distribution requires a new [...]

]]> By: Vladimir Dimitroff http://blog.simeonov.com/2007/11/30/the-science-of-viral-marketing/#comment-16656 Fri, 21 Dec 2007 22:49:37 +0000 http://simeons.wordpress.com/2007/11/30/the-science-of-viral-marketing/#comment-16656 Very, very interesting study – but nonetheless an isolated and non-representative case. As Sim commented: the propagation graphs are only as good as your campaign design. Poorly planned initiatives may result in conclusions like ‘Viral is all hype and no substance, it doesn’t work’. Wrong, of course. But ‘Viral’ is too many things to different people and certainly a lot broader than just primitive incentive schemes.

We need to keep in mind that ‘viral’ is not only (and not necessarily) about recommendations. In many cases it may be a ‘transport mechanism’, a many-to-many communication channel for a one-to-many message.

The effective, multi-connected nodes also don’t have to be seen as spammers – if they are encouraged to apply permission principles. There is nothing wrong in reaching many recipients, if they are happy to receive what they perceive as useful (or even just interesting) communication.

In a recent mobile telco case (that I am contractually bound to keep anonymous) we used a social network model to reach a large audience, by encouraging nodes to forward free (acceptable and desirable) content – in our case jokes. The only condition to subscribe to the free service was a permission to receive occasional product news from the source. After reaching a critical mass with just humour, the ‘product news’ was an irresistible special offer that was not visible in any other communication channel. (Unlike the company in the above study where ‘viral’ competes with a very visible site). As a result, the competition was puzzled by the sudden jump in customer churn and only figured it out when one of their directors (a keen subscriber to the joke service) received the special offer himself…

If we make hurried ‘wise’ conclusions like the one that viral sales are “just a drop in the bucket of sales that occur through the website”, then I can say the opposite: viral sales in our case were a Niagara compared to the drop that ocurred elsewhere.

While SNA is already a well established scientific discipline, its application in marketing (and commerce in general) is still in very early empirical (even cowboy) days. It requires cross-discipline competence and close collaboration between mathematics (propagation models etc) and the humanitarian disciplines that underpin marketing (and even higher business strategy), still a rather rare combination.

Which shouldn’t stop us all from trying :)

]]> By: Simeon Simeonov http://blog.simeonov.com/2007/11/30/the-science-of-viral-marketing/#comment-16485 Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:57:49 +0000 http://simeons.wordpress.com/2007/11/30/the-science-of-viral-marketing/#comment-16485 Jim, right, the paper is full of little insights like that, e.g., what’s the most effective number of “forwards” one can make. Too little is not enough. Too many and people start thinking of you as a spammer.

]]> By: Jim Cropcho http://blog.simeonov.com/2007/11/30/the-science-of-viral-marketing/#comment-16482 Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:02:29 +0000 http://simeons.wordpress.com/2007/11/30/the-science-of-viral-marketing/#comment-16482 well, i managed to finish it. jeez, there is a lot of material there; quite an in-depth analysis. one of the more interesting (and easier to implement changes because of) results is that “weak ties were important to the rate of information diffusion,” to oversimplify. Much of what I’d read in the past about viral marketing focused on the importance of those “supernode” individuals who were the minority which propagated product selections frequently. Those people are quite important, but there is a long tail of recommenders, particular for niche/subculture products. I’d always thought that, so it’s good to see some backup, finally ;)

]]> By: Jim Cropcho http://blog.simeonov.com/2007/11/30/the-science-of-viral-marketing/#comment-16462 Mon, 10 Dec 2007 19:49:29 +0000 http://simeons.wordpress.com/2007/11/30/the-science-of-viral-marketing/#comment-16462 Wow! That graph of recommendation network propagation is awesome! Even if that were all this post mentioned about the study, I would read it that day.

btw. I agree with Maria.

]]> By: Maria Reyes-McDavis http://blog.simeonov.com/2007/11/30/the-science-of-viral-marketing/#comment-16395 Sat, 08 Dec 2007 04:20:50 +0000 http://simeons.wordpress.com/2007/11/30/the-science-of-viral-marketing/#comment-16395 Great post… your absolutely right. There is quite a bit of “sayers” in viral marketing — but very little data to clearly define what works and systemizing it.

Maria Reyes-McDavis

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