Social media as a commodity: the nature of viral
Posted by Phil Smulian on 14 Sep 2008 | Tagged as: Social Media
I think the underlying principle that applies to the success of social network friendly media is that something can always be designed to appeal to a chosen set of people; talent not required.
It`s about as easy to carve a given concept permanently into peoples` minds as it is to shoot comatose fish in their respective barrels, especially with the free technology available today.
Anything that manages to stimulate the senses, has some power over the sensor. Stimulation has to be interpreted, and human kind will often show off talent for total misapprehension, and louse up the message.
What I’m rambling about is that internet users (especially younger ones) are seduced by intensities of things; a low vibrating voice that is deeper than usual, a violently oscillating ripple, and the sweetness of a scent. Each stimulus will either teach the brain something new, or call up banks of memory associated to it in some earlier experience.
And ultimately we make what we want of these complex maps of life`s events. Our tendency is usually to relate a new experience to a bunch of old ones.
I’ll see a buffoon bungle haplessly into a neat arrangement of desks for instance, and I’ll link it immediately to a series of memories where a deeply respected friend perhaps bellowed laughter at some thicket of idiots causing general havoc. My mind connects the dots logically, combines the feelings, and bobs your uncle: I choose to lampoon the unfortunate guy, and my behaviour toward him in future is negative, until someone I respect tells me otherwise, or he knees my groin. This method that the brain uses to evaluate reality is so inaccurate. It also resembles a Toyota production line. All our decisions are born of behavioural cues. If in this production line, one small machine fails; the entire process falls apart and becomes ineffective.
What if in reality the staggering clown-man happened to be a wealthy investor? My unwelcoming attitude would cost me much needed funding for a project I had so much belief in. Then would my judgement have been sound? No, it would have been based on an insufficient amount of data, sort of like when Google analytics forgets to separate your CPC clicks from your organic traffic. Your total traffic volume doesn’t reflect what`s really cutting on the server banks.
So, I’d say we balance our decision making. We link new things to old memories, but we also make some effort to be different. I think we have DNA programming that governs the process, and DNA itself gets re-written as we grow.
Any given person is at anytime subject to laziness and fatigue, with the result that new experiences get dealt with in the least energy consuming fashion: the linking to old memories one. In this way we find that a percentage of the exhausted internet browsing population will, at any given time, come to like things that are simple, and easily communicable, which they will then spread. This is the anatomy of modern society. A cave-dweller of old might, upon opening an email of a cat dressed as Yoda, have clubbed the monitor into glass dust owing to him lacking any memory to connect it to, thus his fear.
So what would make a piece of media virally successful? Probably the same qualities that make a virus successful: sheer persistence and tenacity and adaptability to the receiving host. A whole mess of factors contribute, since consumers can be rather stubborn at times, and tend to shield themselves from half of the products, novel and practical, they are bombarded with.
A quality that is naturally alluring and excels particularly online is perceived humility, for instance, when I only give you something useful and ask little or nothing in return. Since the web can be host to all kinds of cheaply generated software and applications that do jobs and solve problems or simply dazzle the senses, this humbleness is fairly easy to portray.
Once I have you visiting my site regularly, there is so much that I can shove in your face to keep you coming back. And every now and then, if I’m lucky, and play my cards right, you will click one of my ads or buy some of my casual retail junk, or read my lengthy posts about mysterious bald patches appearing on my uncle`s Joe`s back-mane.
