as I was saying to Dan in a comment, I’m probably going to take this blog in another direction, that of branding and web marketing, rather than seo and linkbuilding and so on. thus, I’m happy to present you a bit of an article which emphasize the design patterns in viral media. Part of it is branding and part is SMO, so even you seo-s out there will like it. I was going to just leave you with a link, but here’s a summary of the thing.

Firstly, point here is that this is not a real analysis, which kind of bums me out, me expecting a nice analysis of all viral media so far and boiling it down to a few points. But nonetheless we have some points here and it sounds like they may work. Also, these do not work by themselves, one needs to know how to weave them into what they may be doing.

1. show that your employees are doing their best to die for providing you with the most awesome ingredients. this works best with companies which are cheap.
2. reverse that, and show that customers are dying to get your products. this works when there really is some reason for people to do so.
3. scare them. show them what happens when they don’t buy your stuff and how people around them may suffer because of this. and it’s their fault, the bastards!
4. “brand halo effect” whatever that is. didn’t get this one, but it’s something about pairing companies with cash to spare with smart creative expensive ad agencies.
5. make a hot showcase of the product. use chicks if possible, naked if possible. also, good for distracting people from the oh so obvious flaws of your products.
6. show something that no one can have and may never actually be produced. again, think chicks, voiceovers and a general sense of awe for the customer when he watches it.
7. just say something everybody knows but make it sound important. and corporate-like. make it impressive. think “i’m sure you know what water is. but did you know that heated at the right temperature, this can actually turn into gas?” tam-dam-daaaam
8. make something crazy, like people who can fly using your sneakers. make it a legal loophole and amaze people with the abilities of your product. also, film it low-quality so that it looks like just some guy filmed it on the street or something, adds credibility, makes people think if it really happened. then when people complain they can;t fly mention the guy in the film was superman and you were just showing off the design. simple, eh
9. do the above, but make it be some regular guy, again taking it closer to the people. make them believe they can also fly.
10. this is a crappy youtube trick which i hate. youtube creates thumbnails of clips by extracting the middle frame. so simply add some chick in a sexy position in the middle of the video and everyone will think it’s porn and watch it. it works, but it screws up your brand.
11. get a celebrity (with a well defined character to people) and put them in another character. make them smart if they’re normally goofy, or sexy if they’re normally goofy, or popular if.. well you get it.
12. use animals, make them act human.
13. do science. think brainiac, or mythbusters.
14. make fun of stupid, fat, etc people. it is in our evil core that we find that really funny.
15. make a funny and ORIGINAL song
16. use wierd people, or people one doesn;t tend to interact with. think ninja, cleaning lady, bank robber
17. shock people, make them expect one thing then shock them with something completely different.
18. rape a stereotype. oh, wait. violate. what they mean is again, put people in different positions than are expected of them. think schumacher driving a pinto.
19. use a catchphrase, make it catchy
20. change the use of normal items. same as 18 but with items not people. however items that behave like people in a way, show emotion
21. link popular video games to reality. like the coca cola gta thing. however this must be a recognisable thing and usually only works with teens.

that was it, just remember these are my words, if you want to read the article, and i suggest you do, since it has nice videos exemplifying what each is about, plus larger, more useful descriptions, visit the article here.

Blog will be silent now unless i find something interesting soon. keep tuned for the nice ebook.

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While browsing through the news in Miro I heard something beginning with Google so I had to check it out. It was called Google Friend Connect and I had no idea what it meant. However, I did get a hint that this thing (whatever it was) helped you add social media features to any site. Umm, okay, where do I sign?

So I Googled it and found the Google Friend Connect page which is amazingly found at google.com/friendconnect/; I know, unexpected. And upon entering that page you find out it’s in closed Beta, or Alpha, or Phi-Teta-Delta for all I care, but it’s not for mere mortals like us. But what is it about? Well, watch the video:

Ok, if you’ve lived through that whole huge thing I guess you know everything, but if not, here are the highlights:

• you can add the ability for people to become members, through simple integration of a script into the page
• people can use their various logins to enter (google account, facebook, orkut, opensocial, and i think linkedin was somewhere)
• you can add a rating, commenting, and sharing gadget to your posts
• people can access friends from their social sites (and send them stuff)
• people get notifications on their social site profiles about what you did on the sites you visited
• easy to sign up after first account config (just click accept and you’re in)
• you can add widgets made by other people
• google will steal your soul and trade it in for a lot of cash

It’s fun to think of the advantages such a thing will bring to your website so get on their mailing list and wait like the rest of us to get awesome advantages free of charge from Google.

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I’ve just finished viewing untraceable, which is a movie about a rather crazy teenage hacker who gets his kicks out of killing people and, yes… a kitten. It’s a pretty gory movie so if you don’t like to see blood or people pretending to be boiling to death, it’s not for you. It’s also a pretty stupid movie, in that its storyline is cut way short (by the slow way it starts you would expect a lot more) and the characters are pretty stupidly sketched as well.

But what’s really interesting about this is how well it portrays human nature, and the very psychological reason behind viral videos. Also, the killer made a website that controlled the speed at which the people died. Without going into any detail, basically the more viewers tuned in, the faster it all went down. And it’s pretty brilliant, aside from the fact that, well, he has killing people (I actually felt the worst about the poor kitty ). Think about it, it gives you interactivity, and fuels your curiosity, gives you something new every now and then, and fuels your thirst for entertainment.

Part two about what he did was the fact that he let people comment on it, which brought people closer to the whole thing. He gave the whole website a social theme and let the people who were watching comment on it. However he was the one pulling the strings, closing off the whole thing himself with one comment about his victim.

Part three was that the whole thing was live. While I’m not sure how well that would work in the real world with different time zones and so on (I get most visitors from the USA, UK, Germany, India and Australia so imagine…), the simple concept of live and interactive is mouth watering for most internet viewers. We’re so used to news streaming almost instantaneously that we want everything as it happens. Some say 9/11 was the most watched TV event ever and I agree. Everyone I knew was watching it. I thought it was a joke at first but the incredulity of it all made me watch for hours. And seeing that second plane plunge into the tower was in a way so appealing to my inner curiosity. We were all engulfed by the sheer terror of it but still, the fact that it was live, happening in front of our very eyes… It was hypnotizing, we simply couldn’t stop watching… Important events happening live are what we want. And if that’s not possible for us, we want them available at some other time. which is where YouTube comes in, offering the ability to relive memories. Instantly and on-demand.

The whole movie ends with a very interesting comment, looking on the whole animality of social networks, where there’s someone who asks: “where can i download this from?”. It’s not over, it circulates, people want to see people suffering, people want to send this incredible thing to their friends, and they want to have it with them.

Social networking is in its infancy and only when mobile devices will fully develop and offer bandwidth at affordable prices will we have a true network of people, giving twitts about what they’re doing at that moment, with streaming video and audio, and social interaction. And as every other technology on the web, its main uses will be military and pornographic.

So, what have we learned?

• interactivity is key to online social experiences, and the sensation that you can control something via the web
• commenting and discussions in general should be encouraged, let people express opinions so they can feel important
• live feeds are a very interesting to the web which never sleeps because it allows people to be part of the experience as it happens in some other part of the world
• offer downloads for people to take that video with them, so they can put it on their mobile phone and show it to their friends and so on

Oh, and by all means, don’t kill people and put them on YouTube. It’s actually not funny anymore, there were these girls who beat up some other girl to put her on youtube, just for the “fun” of it. People are so sick sometimes… Thank God they’re stupid too (posted the vid on youtube so they could be arrested…).

The movie trailer after the break.

Since I promised it to Dan, here’s an article about the recent Googapple SMO prank which I started in anticipation of April 1st. It was launched early to get a bit of momentum, but I had a problem that one of my biggest referrers has become 404 for the past day or so. So don’t be surprised by the fact that views may be lower when closer to April 1st. For this prank there has also been a special landing page for users from YouTube etc which was watched via statcounter.

So, without further ado, the scores today. First, we start with the in-house scoreboard, wp-stats, which reports the graph for the article as:

You can see the initial boost via the initial SMO care to it, and then an organic growth up until the 1st when my main referrer failed permanently and it dropped like a stone.

I’ve also generated a couple of heatmaps for it, one for average attention (but ran out of log space so it’s only for 14 viewers):

And the other one is a regular click heatmap:

What I find really interesting here is that many people have also clicked on the Google.com link, which was a trap, leading to the same large image html, but preyed on the fact that people would want verification of the fact Gotcha!

Also, we have the stats for the landing page:

Here you can see a very natural progression, with most hits on April 1st, as was intended

Also, the scores for the other places it appeared are:

• YouTube: 101 views
• metacafe: just 23 views - more on this lower
• slideshare: 114 views
• digg: 6 diggs - more details lower

Ok, so explanations for the above; firstly, metacafe has so few views because it was pulled down for a few days for a presumed copyright infringement, and then restored after I explained it was a parody. And secondly, digg registered few views because it was less than believable, having no verification link… However, it did generate some comments, which are always welcome

There has been another quite powerful referrer but it’s down now so I can’t really give you any stats there. This has been my first actual SMO attempt, from the viral point of view, and it’s been quite good, giving me twice the normal traffic, and with no cost at all, I’d say it’s been a success. I’ve also enjoyed the comments, and the feed count has increased so all is well

Try to learn from this experiment, see what I did well, what I did wrong because SMO is very powerful right now. However, you will get a bit of a regional bias to the US, since social networks are used more there.

And, as always, leave your comments and I’ll reply as soon as I can.

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