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For the business in this crowd: Does this approach yield similar results for you? I could imagine iPhone applications spreading this way (much like those damn

by Shamiq 17y ago

For the business in this crowd: Does this approach yield similar results for you? I could imagine iPhone applications spreading this way (much like those damn Facebook quizzes), but what about for more specialized markets?

sachinag 17y ago
It only works if the product is great. There are a few rocket ships that are great products that have grown with word of mouth that don't have the structural virality (as with Facebook quizzes or the Hotmail footer) - Mint and Dropbox immediately come to mind. Google, as well, if you go back a few years.
- jfarmer 17y ago
  Not necessaryily true. Mike Speiser wrote a great article about people who "hack traction" by designing aggressive/spammy viral loops: http://gigaom.com/2009/06/07/hacking-traction-the-dark-side-of-marketing-optimization/ http://gigaom.com/2009/06/07/hacking-traction-the-dark-side-... It depends on your definition of "works," I suppose. The above "works" for Tagged, but I imagine most people on HN would say that that isn't "working" -- it's spamming. The best kind, obviously, is the sort people like Seth Godin write about, where people are so passionate that they are actively seeking to spread your product. Unfortunately it's often easier to fall to the dark side ("easier, more seductive") and spend time optimizing your viral loop than building a product your customers are excited about.
jfarmer 17y ago
It's a funnel you can optimize like any other. For example, Hotmail could have A/B tested the footer copy to see which resulted in the highest conversion rate. That would also have told them something about how their product should be positioned in the market (e.g., whether people care more about flexibility or security). The iPhone is hard because you don't have many hooks. Loopt tried to make it work and then blamed it on an errant "bug," but it was clear they were trying to get a viral loop running over SMS. http://getsatisfaction.com/loopt/topics/how_can_i_never_receive_another_loopt_sms_invitation_ever http://getsatisfaction.com/loopt/topics/how_can_i_never_rece... Really you can do this over any social network, where "social network" is defined in the broadest sense as a collection of people with message-carrying connections. This includes email, IM, SMS, Facebook, snail mail, etc. More specialized markets work, too. For example, Xfire spread this way through gaming circles, and Raptr is trying to do the same thing except over third-party IM networks like AIM and Yahoo!
Shooter 17y ago
We've had some success with this type of thing, especially in more niche business markets. Business software usually has a much greater lock-in factor than consumer sofware, so you often have to worry less about retention than you do in most consumer viral apps, which makes the effect even more powerful. If you augment the basic principle with other things (video, etc.), it can really go crazy. An example: We have a product that performs a type of very specialized financial analysis in an automated fashion, for free. The analysis was normally done only by real estate and tax attorneys during specialized commercial property transactions, at steep hourly rates. [The analysis itself is a very rarely needed thing for very obscure clients...so we are not operating on a "try one, buy more" basis. We just use it as a loss-leader intro for some of our other services. It was just supposed to be a 'show off' piece.] Our initial marketing campaign for the service fell flat, because people simply didn't believe we could do what we said we could do. Both the automation and the free aspect were so unusual that it sounded "too good to be true," so people thought it was a scam of some kind. We're also not attorneys or tax professionals (although we have some on staff), so we lacked credibility. And why would we give away a multi-thousand dollar service - that the rare client may only need once - for free? We started adding an "Analysis completed by EXXXampleService.com" statement to the bottom of the tax/legal documents in this market that we handled in our own business, and to those that we provided for law firm clients on an outsourced basis. We also added the same statement to the bottom of outgoing emails that dealt with this part of our business. Importantly, the statement in the email was a hotlink to a <2min video that explained what our service did in the most general terms and why we did it. Below this, there was another link to a longer-form video that explained the analytic process in more detail and showed the before and after result. The uptake on our service surged after we implemented the document statements and email links. A large number of potential clients ended up viewing the longer-form video. We now have about 22% of all clients in the US that need this service performed. Which is still a very small market. And we don't make any money on this initial analysis. But - and this is the viral loop aspect - now that we have these clients, all of their legal and tax documents for the transaction are already in our document management system. And these documents have to be used by both parties in the transaction. And we have some enticing features built into our system that can be used for most types of these transactions, including 'normal' transactions. So everyone involved in the transaction ends up trying our software for "just this one specialized deal" because the docs being there will save them a tiny amount of time...but once 'inside' our collaborative dealroom software they realize that they simply can't live without it for all of their everyday deals because it saves them so much time and money. The end result is that we end up getting both parties to these commercial transactions as long-term clients. And we often sign up other third-party professionals that were also involved in the transaction (legal, accounting, environment consultants, etc.) for other related services, as well.

by Shamiq 17y ago

sachinag 17y ago

It only works if the product is great. There are a few rocket ships that are great products that have grown with word of mouth that don't have the structural virality (as with Facebook quizzes or the Hotmail footer) - Mint and Dropbox immediately come to mind. Google, as well, if you go back a few years.

jfarmer 17y ago
Not necessaryily true. Mike Speiser wrote a great article about people who "hack traction" by designing aggressive/spammy viral loops: http://gigaom.com/2009/06/07/hacking-traction-the-dark-side-of-marketing-optimization/ http://gigaom.com/2009/06/07/hacking-traction-the-dark-side-... It depends on your definition of "works," I suppose. The above "works" for Tagged, but I imagine most people on HN would say that that isn't "working" -- it's spamming. The best kind, obviously, is the sort people like Seth Godin write about, where people are so passionate that they are actively seeking to spread your product. Unfortunately it's often easier to fall to the dark side ("easier, more seductive") and spend time optimizing your viral loop than building a product your customers are excited about.

jfarmer 17y ago

It's a funnel you can optimize like any other. For example, Hotmail could have A/B tested the footer copy to see which resulted in the highest conversion rate. That would also have told them something about how their product should be positioned in the market (e.g., whether people care more about flexibility or security). The iPhone is hard because you don't have many hooks. Loopt tried to make it work and then blamed it on an errant "bug," but it was clear they were trying to get a viral loop running over SMS. http://getsatisfaction.com/loopt/topics/how_can_i_never_receive_another_loopt_sms_invitation_ever http://getsatisfaction.com/loopt/topics/how_can_i_never_rece... Really you can do this over any social network, where "social network" is defined in the broadest sense as a collection of people with message-carrying connections. This includes email, IM, SMS, Facebook, snail mail, etc. More specialized markets work, too. For example, Xfire spread this way through gaming circles, and Raptr is trying to do the same thing except over third-party IM networks like AIM and Yahoo!

Shooter 17y ago

We've had some success with this type of thing, especially in more niche business markets. Business software usually has a much greater lock-in factor than consumer sofware, so you often have to worry less about retention than you do in most consumer viral apps, which makes the effect even more powerful. If you augment the basic principle with other things (video, etc.), it can really go crazy. An example: We have a product that performs a type of very specialized financial analysis in an automated fashion, for free. The analysis was normally done only by real estate and tax attorneys during specialized commercial property transactions, at steep hourly rates. [The analysis itself is a very rarely needed thing for very obscure clients...so we are not operating on a "try one, buy more" basis. We just use it as a loss-leader intro for some of our other services. It was just supposed to be a 'show off' piece.] Our initial marketing campaign for the service fell flat, because people simply didn't believe we could do what we said we could do. Both the automation and the free aspect were so unusual that it sounded "too good to be true," so people thought it was a scam of some kind. We're also not attorneys or tax professionals (although we have some on staff), so we lacked credibility. And why would we give away a multi-thousand dollar service - that the rare client may only need once - for free? We started adding an "Analysis completed by EXXXampleService.com" statement to the bottom of the tax/legal documents in this market that we handled in our own business, and to those that we provided for law firm clients on an outsourced basis. We also added the same statement to the bottom of outgoing emails that dealt with this part of our business. Importantly, the statement in the email was a hotlink to a <2min video that explained what our service did in the most general terms and why we did it. Below this, there was another link to a longer-form video that explained the analytic process in more detail and showed the before and after result. The uptake on our service surged after we implemented the document statements and email links. A large number of potential clients ended up viewing the longer-form video. We now have about 22% of all clients in the US that need this service performed. Which is still a very small market. And we don't make any money on this initial analysis. But - and this is the viral loop aspect - now that we have these clients, all of their legal and tax documents for the transaction are already in our document management system. And these documents have to be used by both parties in the transaction. And we have some enticing features built into our system that can be used for most types of these transactions, including 'normal' transactions. So everyone involved in the transaction ends up trying our software for "just this one specialized deal" because the docs being there will save them a tiny amount of time...but once 'inside' our collaborative dealroom software they realize that they simply can't live without it for all of their everyday deals because it saves them so much time and money. The end result is that we end up getting both parties to these commercial transactions as long-term clients. And we often sign up other third-party professionals that were also involved in the transaction (legal, accounting, environment consultants, etc.) for other related services, as well.