Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus
106
 www.ideavirus.com
So, when a sneezer is going on and on and on about how cool this is, you just take out your
Palm, they take out their Palm, press the give button and sixty seconds later 
the entire product
is now on your Palm!
That’s smooth. It’s about as close to perfect smoothness as you can get.
It goes beyond smooth. It’s persistent. The next time you synchronize your Palm with your
PC, it will automatically upload all the ratings you’ve put into the computer and get you an
updated version. Instantly. Automatically.
The ideavirus has stuck.
Is it working? Well, the folks at Vindigo seeded just 100 sneezers with the original version of
the program. Then they spent virtually nothing on advertising and waited to see if the virus
would spread. It’s now the fastest-growing application on the Palm.
Note that this isn’t viral marketing in the sense that Hotmail is. You can happily use Vindigo
for months without mentioning its existence to a friend. Vindigo works really well, but it
also happens to be optimized for spreading the ideavirus.

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Unleashing the Ideavirus
107
 www.ideavirus.com
Saving The World With An Ideavirus
The Prius is a new car from Toyota. And it’s the only car that’s ever won an award from the
Sierra Club. This is the car that’s supposed to save us from ourselves, to take a whack out of
the greenhouse effect and to conserve our remaining fossil fuels.
How? By using an engine that’s a hybrid of gasoline and electricity. By getting more than 90
miles to the gallon, giving very good performance and emitting close to zero pollution. I
dearly hope it succeeds. THIS CAR IS IMPORTANT!
Unfortunately, because Toyota is a factory-based company that uses ideas (instead of being
an idea company that owns factories) they’ve built the product completely backwards. I’m
confident that someday everybody is going to be driving a car as positive for the world as the
Prius, but it won’t be because of the way 
this
car is marketed.
Let’s start with the name. How can you tell someone about a car you’re excited about if you
don’t know how to pronounce it? Is it pry-us, or is it pree-us? I don’t want to feel stupid, so I
just won’t say the name.
Second, is there a smooth way for me to spread the word? A visit to the Toyota website
doesn’t even show the Prius on the home page, and when I search for it, I get a very nice
page. But where’s the “tell a friend” button? How can I set up a test drive? Is there a place for
me to give my email address so I can give permission to get information on when the car is
going to be available in my neighborhood? Alas, no on all three counts.
What about a community activism component with teenagers going door to door with
petitions, hoping to lobby the local government to buy Prius police cars? Or letter-writing
campaigns that spring up from grassroots environmental organizations around the
country…?

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