Picture taken from the Community Next Viral Conference in Sunnyvale (thanks to Jeremiah’s flickr). By the way…I had trouble finding the address to this place!
Got a chance to meet some new friends and learn a few things about viral marketing as well considering MySpace, RockYou, PBWiki + others gave some good advice. I wonder who won the iPhone…their task was to find the 5 people at the conference who were infected! I asked Jeremiah if he was infected, he said no, so I gave up! 🙂
Jason Feffer, user #4 to sign up for MySpace and one of the originators, provided a good recap of the history of viral marketing. He insists that MySpace is a great example of a successful viral campaign and he’s right.
One of his main points is to control your brand and become a utility. MySpace had several opportunities cross their path before they hit the big time, but they picked them wisely. For example, MySpace was approached with an opportunity to market their company in front of a thousand plus crowd in Las Vegas for free, but they turned it down! Why? B/c they dont want their name associated with other parties/events/services that is not hosted by them. Which makes sense, but if they did take that opportunity, where would MySpace be now? Probably as successful!
He used the word “infected” a lot! Even went so far to say that bad WOM brings in new users because it infects them! AND…WOM spreads faster when you’ve got a bad product…hm, maybe thats the way to go. Release a bad product, then BAM, release the new/good product.
Jia and Ben from RockYou had some interesting thoughts about widgets. They’re focused on self express widgets for individuals. This is important because the users keep the viral moving. More interesting, they introduced 3 simple words: simple, easy, and utility…or what I like to call SEU. I’ll explore the implications of this a bit more soon.
These are just some highlights of what I learned, more will come later. Overall, this conference was enjoyable and Im looking forward to future events. Whats next?