Five Types of Virality (opens in new tab)

I followed the link, having misread it as "File Types of Virality" and thinking it was something about file formats, relating to hosting viruses.

When I see posts like this I just assume everyone at [ insert company y ] up voted.

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.

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:

  - https://medium.com/@smitty/what-i-learned-from-100-s-of-hours-studying-platform-businesses-platform-building-basics-part-1-1ae6e75c6cf0

  - https://medium.com/art-marketing/the-platform-stack-c83f9c96e6

Slide #68 here talks about the difference (the whole deck is worth a look-see):

  - http://www.slideshare.net/a16z/network-effects-59206938/68-Whats_the_differenceD_E_F

Some of my clients have found spreadsheet/tutorial/example useful to help them "bring it home":

  - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20121002124206-18876785-how-to-model-viral-growth-the-hybrid-model

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 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.