1. (Justin Bieber didn't make it on talent alone)
Going Viral
(Justin Bieber didn't make it on talent alone)

2. Online Buzz 

3. Why do we need to know why some things go viral?
There are three reasons for pursuing this question: To be heard To be aware To be in control

4. Definitions
To 'go viral': to spread rapidly through peer references; the rate of hits/views rises exponentially; viral posts/videos are typically viewed more than 100,000 times. “Viral videos”: online video clips that gain widespread popularity when they are passed from person to person via , instant messages, and media-sharing Web sites. "Viral marketing": has emerged as the electronic form of WoM and involves the principle of passing on or referring news, information or entertainment to another person. "Word of Mouth (WOM)": offline and online person-to-person communication.

5. Two Broad Approaches Method Matters Content Counts
Main idea: the content of an artefact is what makes it go viral.
Focus question: what makes artefacts go viral?
Method Matters
Main idea: the online marketing of an artefact is what makes it go viral.
Focus question: who makes artefacts go viral?

6. Content: a selection of opinions
West, 2011:
Short title (3 or fewer words)
Short run-time (less than 2 minutes)
'Irony' (something contradictory to social expectations)
Music
Buzzfeed:
lists
quizzes (appeal to vanity - make the user look good)
relevance
catchy title
humour
Jonah Peretti (founder of Buzzfeed):
engaging content: humourous, original, and/or controversial

7. What Makes Online Content Viral?
- Emotion shapes virality. Content that evokes high-arousal positive (awe) or negative (anger or anxiety) emotions is more viral. Content that evokes low-arousal, or deactivating, emotions (e.g., sadness) is less viral. 
- More emotional, positive, interesting, and anger-inducing
and fewer sadness-inducing stories are likely to make the
most blogged list.

8. Content: Creative Determinants of Viral Video Viewing (Southgate, Westoby & Page, 2010)
Criteria used to predict the success of TV ads can also be used - with some adaptation - to predict online virality:
enjoyment, involvement
distinctiveness
celebrity popularity
likelihood to forward ('buzz')
has LEGS: Laugh-out-loud funny, Edgy, Gripping or Sexy (Nealon, 2007)

9. Method: Strategies for going viral
Use of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube etc.
Word of mouth: hearing what's popular from people around you. 
Participation (Burgess, 2008): users participate by commenting, sharing, 'favouriting', making 'mashups' or their own versions

10. Method: Online Buzz & Offline WOM
- the combination of online buzz and offline word-of-mouth (WOM) greatly effects the messages presented in online material

11. Charlie bit my finger! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OBlgSz8sSM
 If you know about this video, where did you hear it from?
WoM?
Social Media?
Recommender (e.g., YouTube 'Most Viewed Videos' list)?   

12. Method: Viral Marketing
Encourages people to pass on a message
Depends on a high pass along rate from person to person
Motivators:
entertainment: fun, humour, games, quizzes, videos, songs
greed: sweepstake , free offers
charity: help an organization, sign petitions
Methods: face-to-face communication, phone conversations, text/instant/ messages, blogs, threads 
HI Andrew, 
You can move the slide wherever it fits :) 

13. Method: more strategies
Advertising executive Dan Greenberg boasts he gets 100,000 views on YouTube for his clients' videos, or he doesn't get paid. Here are some of his strategies:
First, get 50,000 views to get on the Daily Most-Viewed' page:
pay people with relevant blogs to link to the video
create fake conversations (forums) around the video
embed videos directly into the pages of MySpace users
create and exploit an extensive Facebook presence
use and friends network
Then, to reach 100,000+ views:
Focus on making title and thumbnail attractive
Release all videos in a campaign simultaneously, then use unique tags to get only the other videos in the campaign appear in the Related Videos box.  

14. Is 'viral' even the right term?
Ideas are accepted by a culture when that culture is ready for them. A better analogy is a forest fire: some fires, if the conditions are right, become monsters (Duncan Watts, in Thompson, 2008).
The 'viral' analogy does work: ideas spread in a similar way to diseases
The analogy has some flaws. For example: 
How do you recover from catching an idea?
Can people be 'immunized' against an idea? Apparently, yes: if people adopt an idea, then switch to another (possibly competing) idea, they are effectively 'immunized' against the first idea.
People who catch a disease isolate themselves; people who catch ideas actively work to spread them

15. Why? What medium goes viral most? Video! Video is:
Why?
Video is:
sharable: "If it doesn't spread, it's dead"
participatory: viewers can comment, re-use, share; participation is a major factor in the online spread of videos     
Are there other reasons why video seems to go viral more than printed material?
What message does the medium of video convey?