In this how-to guide for viral advertising at the 2011 Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Jonah Peretti lists several requirements for having your content be seen by millions, including the proper venue as well as good mechanisms for reacting to and sharing media. He also describes further reasons to harness the advantage of hosting or sharing popular content.
The ability to react, share, and express an opinion is, according to Peretti, far more important than the content itself. Viral media is not viral solely because it's important or funny, but because people can give opinions, pass judgment, and use the media as an excuse to socialize. The focus on social networking instead of content is key, and he explains an essential difference between Facebook and Twitter.
Viral lift, or the traffic due to viral content, is as important to the host or site as the ability to socialize is to the user. Having content shared through Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon exponentially increases traffic, popularity, and visibility of a site or source. This makes viral content pivotal to social advertising, and a large source of potential income. Analyzing viral lift also allows sites to decide what content to promote, expand, or reduce.
Jonah Peretti has spent the last six years creating viral hits, tracking online social behavior, and building technology to amplify buzz. He has been called a "viral marketing hotdog" by the New York Times, "the poster boy of guerilla media" by AlterNet, and was selected by Men's Vogue as one of 13 American Visionaries. Peretti is currently developing a new platform called BuzzFeed designed to help good things win the online popularity contest.
Peretti co-founded HuffingtonPost.com and has consulted for Sony Pictures, Procter & Gamble, and other leading brands. Peretti's viral media experiments include the Nike sweatshop email, BlackPeopleLoveUs.com, the New York City Rejection Line, and FundRace.org. These projects started small but spread through word-of-mouth to millions, illustrating the practical application of 6-degrees of separation and tipping points.
Peretti is a graduate of the MIT Media Lab and has taught at NYU and the Parsons School of Design. His work has been covered by Time, the Economist, and Fortune. He also has appeared as a guest on the Today Show, Good Morning America, and CNN. His most recent publication, "Viral Marketing for the Real World," is in the May 2007 issue of Harvard Business Review.
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