Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus
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 www.ideavirus.com
Viral Marketing Is An Ideavirus, But Not All Ideaviruses Are Viral Marketing
Viral marketing is a special case of an ideavirus. Viral marketing is an ideavirus in which the
medium of the virus IS the product. It’s an idea where the idea 
is
the amplifier.
DEFINITION: AMPLIFIER A key difference between word of mouth and an ideavirus is
that word of mouth dies out while an ideavirus gets bigger. Why? Because something
amplifies the recommendations to a far larger audience. That could be TV or other forms of
media (a good review in the 
New York Times
that amplifies the message of one reviewer to
many readers) or it could be the web (a site like planetfeedback.com amplifies the message of
a single user).
Steve Jurvetson, the venture capitalist behind Hotmail, coined the term “viral marketing” to
describe the way the service grew. Hotmail offered free email. That alone was a very
compelling two-word business proposition. But the magic of the company was that in every
single email you sent using the service, there was a little ad on the bottom of the note. And
the ad said, 
“
Get Your Private, Free Email from Hotmail at 
www.hotmail.com”.
Every time you sent a note, you spread the virus. The magic of viral marketing is that the
medium carries the message. The more you use Hotmail, the more you spread the virus. But
note: It was also extremely smooth…. The Hotmail site was just a click away from an email,
and it took just a few clicks more to start using it—and sending Hotmail’s built-in ads to
your
friends.
Unfortunately, not every product lends itself to viral marketing. Viral marketing requires
that the product you’re using be communications-focused or very public. The new VW
Beetle is an example of viral marketing. Why? Because the more you drive it, the more
people see it. And the more Beetles people see, the more they want one. It’s not audible and
it’s not as smooth as Hotmail, but it is most definitely viral.
Many of the very best Internet ideas are built around some level of viral marketing. Using an
earlier example, Referrals.com pays big money to people who recruit their friends for hot

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