How Do Things Actually“Go Viral?”

We tend to think that things ‘go viral’ like a cold at a grade school: shared & reshared & reshared again.

That they’re sooo contagious, people keep passing it on until everyone knows about it.

Like “Double Rainbow Guy”. Rebecca Black’s “Friday”. Grimaceshake.

Or Nathan Apodaca aka Dogg Face Vibin to Fleetwood Mac “Dreams” while enjoying some cranberry juice on his skateboard.

Well…

Folks from Stanford & Microsoft analyzed the spread of over 600 millllllion things on Twitter during 2011-12: news, videos, photos, etc.

Turns out, the the biggest hits aren’t ‘viral’.

They’re just amplified by a few large accounts that have tooons of reach.

And no content is so contagious it exceeds some imagined ‘viral threshold’ & goes supernova.

So you wanna go viral? Get The Rock to repost it.

Some lessons:

★ Don't believe everything you believe about marketing.

★ Don’t assume stuff gets passed along in a great viral chain reaction.

★ If you want lots of reach, get your stuff shared/reshared by people or accounts with, uh, lots of reach.