Contagious Why Things Catch On

Tom Dickson was looking for a new job:
Sauer, Patrick J. (2008), “Confessions of a Viral Video
Superstar,” 
Inc.
magazine, June 19. Go to 
http://jonahberger.com
 to see Tom blending an iPhone.
in 1999 Blendtec was founded:
See 
http://donteattheshrimp.com/2007/07/03/will-it-blend-gets-
blendtec-in-the-wsj/
 and 
http://magazine.byu.edu/?act=view&a=2391
 for some good discussions of
the early years at Blendtec.
1.
Social Currency
Brian decided:
 Interviews with Brian Shebairo on May 16, 2012, and Jim Meehan on May 13, 2012.
40 percent of what people talk about:
Dunbar, Robert I. M., Anna Marriott, and N. D. C. Duncan

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(1997), “Human Conversational Behavior,” 
Human Nature
8, no. 3, 231–44.
half of tweets are “me” focused:
Naaman, Mor, Jeffrey Boase, and Chih-Hui Lai (2010), “Is It
Really About Me? Message Content in Social Awareness Streams,” 
Proceedings of the ACM
Conference
, 189–92.
Jason Mitchell and Diana Tamir:
Tamir, Diana I., and Jason P. Mitchell (2012), “Disclosing
Information About the Self Is Intrinsically Rewarding,” 
Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences
109, no. 21, 8038–43.
We make educated guesses:
 See Berger, Jonah, and Chip Heath (2008), “Who Drives Divergence?
Identity Signaling, Outgroup Dissimilarity, and the Abandonment of Cultural Tastes,” 
Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology
95, no. 3, 593–605. See also Berger, Jonah, and Chip Heath
(2007), “Where Consumers Diverge from Others: Identity Signaling and Product Domains,”
Journal of Consumer Research
34, no. 2, 121–34, for discussions of research in this area.
Prada handbag:
Wojnicki, Andrea C., and Dave Godes (2010), “Word-of-Mouth as Self-
Enhancement,” University of Toronto working paper. See also De Angelis, Matteo, Andrea
Bonezzi, Alessandro Peluso, Derek Rucker, and Michele Costabile (2012), “On Braggarts and
Gossips: A Self-Enhancement Account of Word-of-Mouth Generation and Transmission,” 
Journal
of Marketing Research
, forthcoming.
Something “out of the ordinary”:
For a discussion of the story behind Snapple facts, see
http://mittelmitte.blogspot.com/2006/09/snapple-real-facts-are-100-true.html
and
http://mysnapplerealfacts.blogspot.com/
.
Wharton professor Raghu Iyengar:
Berger, Jonah, and Raghuram Iyengar (2013), “How Interest
Shapes Word-of-Mouth over Different Channels,” Wharton working paper.
More interesting tweets:
Bakshy, Eytan, Jake M. Hofman, Winter A. Mason, and Duncan J. Watts
(2011), “Everyone’s an Influencer: Quantifying Influence on Twitter,” 
WSDM
, 65–74. See also
Berger, Jonah, and Katherine Milkman (2012), “What Makes Online Content Viral,” 
Journal of
Marketing Research
49, no. 2, 192–205.
psychologists from the University of Illinois:
Burrus, Jeremy, Justin Kruger, and Amber Jurgens
(2006), “The Truth Never Stands in the Way of a Good Story: The Distortion of Stories in the
Service of Entertainment,” University of Illinois working paper.
One way to generate surprise:
Heath, Chip, and Dan Heath (2011), 
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas
Survive and Others Die
(New York: Random House).
Mysteries and controversy:
 Ibid. See also Chen, Zoey, and Jonah Berger (2012), “When, Why, and
How Controversy Causes Conversation,” Wharton working paper.
Shot on a handheld camera:
Details about