an extension of this thread. just curious if there were any particular viral marketing sites using unique strategies you've seen out there? from the other thread the following have been mentioned: freeipods myspace youtube hotmail
I think the Gmail example in the other thread was a great one. Having people send "beta invites" to their friends worked great, and by initially keeping the number of invites pretty limited it was made to seem like a really big deal. Even people with no friends were out offering Gmail invites on forums and what not.
oops, missed that one. yeah, I agree it was certainly an interesting idea. I still wonder if they did that intentionally or really weren't sure if they could allow open registrations to the service... looks like it may be that they had to limit things, considering how it works now (the whole mobile phone thing). any others?
the best viral campaign I ever saw was ibest.com some 4 or 5 years ago ibest was about the best websites by categories. they would give you an icon to put on your website so your visitor would vote for you. they gave the results once a year. it worked great, because everybody wanted to win, and all the webmaster would put the icon linked to ibest on their websites. the site is long gone, but we can still find a lot of links to them, as well as icons and results all over the internet.
^ ibest reminded me of the notorious iWon.com -- did a great job getting people hooked in. How about Napster?
did napster do something specific to make it viral or are you just referring to the service they offered being so unique it spread virally? another thing that came to mind for me: digg. delicious, etc. people want to be added so they link to "add / vote for me here !" style things. tons of publicity for the sites.
Hey Disgust, If you're referring to "did people link to them" - I can't remember... but by word of mouth, viral marketing was at it's finest
I was more just wondering if they had some specific strategy beyond just offering an awesome service that automatically became viral, I guess. napster's a good example but unfortunately it's not quite as useful to most webmasters as some of the other strategies available.
An oldie but goodie is Hotmail. They put a link to get your own hotmail account at the bottom of every email. Very viral.
I had to trade pics of my GF to get my Gmail invite but it was a good trade when gmail was just starting!
Gosh! Really? Gmail works awesome because people have this curioisty factor they don't want to be left out ever...also they were curious as to what google was doing...People'll blindly promote anything google or myspace or youtube does...they are so loyal. In the end, it has to be something unique and interesting and BETTER than everything else kinda thing for people to really take notice and for your viral marketing to actually kick off
there was a post here about a little funny script. You will write a short message, and then a little ninja will write it slashing it's sword. You could copy the script for your message and add it to your website, blog or whatever. It skyrocked the visits to the site. That would be an example easy to replicate. The thing is coming up with a little script that people enjoy sending their friends
There are a couple of excellent viral marketing examples going on right now, ConquerYouNiche.com and Review me. I have a blog posting about it here 2 Sites Are Hitting the Viral Marketing Jackpot
Hey Disgust, It's like I said "word of mouth" is how it happened - much like YouTube or MySpace. Sure, they both had links but how many people signed up JUST because of those links? No, most will sign up because they find something useful. For instance: YouTube.com has a HUGE DB of Videos MySpace can connect you with old friends... and they were growing rapidly and ALSO had more features than the rest - the biggest being MUSIC. As for Napster - it grew because it was an easy to use P2P Program that allowed ANYONE to find ANY type of music they desired. But it also became a hot commodity due to the fact that it allowed others to upload their Library OR their OWN music they recorded. But Marketing in essence is mostly about Research and I say ANYONE who wants to learn about Viral Marketing needs to understand this. You can't copy another product and expect to grow in the same fashion...you've got to bring something new to the table. MySpace combined MP3.com with Friendsters Technology and used MP3's year long downtime to gain membership from Bands. In turn the bands created links to their music. While most wouldn't sign up just from a link - they slowly 'grew in love' with the Technology and decided they would like to keep in touch with their favorite bands and say hi to old friends. YouTube didn't copy MySpace -- they took advantage of the fact that MySpace wasn't offering Videos. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster Napster helped create the Internet version of Viral Marketing, if you ask me. They created something everybody would 'need' or enjoy at one time or another. Music is something everybody enjoys and connecting fans worldwide was something they helped create with Genres on their side
Was that comment directed toward me? If so, I always put in affiliate link when I have them, whether or not I give a bad review or good review. I have posted several negative reviews of things I have affiliate links for. I never let that get in the way of how I judge something. I also usually identify all my affiliate links in my review, so people are fully aware of it. I forgot on this one but I went back in and edited the post to indicate that it is an affiliate link. This is standard practice among bloggers, even with industry leaders like Darren Rowse (Problogger) and Jennifer Slegg (JenSense) include affiliate links in blog postings.
A recent post on DP (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=172734&page=6) created a bit of a stir, nowhere near the scale of hotmail, gmail or the hamsterdance (anyone remember that one?), however the site in question managed to get itself on many high profile content sites such as digg, news.com, cnet, netscape to name but a few - but it shows how an emotive subject piece can create interest in a very short time-frame.
Jesus! I just checked out hamsterdance.com and it has been completely commercialised. I've not seen it for years but I checked it out on wayback and took a trip down memory lane - it's always amusing to see how really crap sites made a huge viral impact