
How to make your application viral - A guide to getting users - swombat
http://danieltenner.com/posts/0009-how-to-make-your-application-viral.html
======
joshu
When I think about social software (which is the context in which "virality"
lives, anyway) I think you have to build for three things - in this order:

1\. Utility - it must be high utility, even if nobody else is in the system.

2\. Network Effect - As people are drawn into the system, it needs to scale in
value more than linearly

3\. Residual value - Value taken out of the system, sometimes as revenue.
Typically ads.

I think that it's not good enough to do these alone, however. You must
construct something that isn't just viral but that makes it such that the fact
that some person is not on the system is PAINFULLY ANNOYING to the actual
users of the system. Consider the growth of email, in general: "Please just go
sign up for an email address somewhere so I can email you!"

If you construct it in this manner, you do not have to spam people. Delicious,
which has a lot of users, never emailed anything other than password resets,
for example.

~~~
pclark
How did delicious get momentum in terms of user base? Did you do anything in
particular or did you just solve a problem and _voila_?

~~~
joshu
I used the predecessor to delicious, alone, from 2001-2003. Then delicious
took another two years, 2003-2005 to get to tens of thousands of users. So it
took a really long time.

Firefox extensions and RSS helped a huge amount. And it was close to one of
the first user data sites that had an API (before Flickr, I think...)

~~~
pclark
fascinating - thanks.

I think in 5 years time delicious & flickr will probably be the two webapps i
still use.

------
kyro
I think one thing you're missing is the idea of social validation, or social
proof, of your product. Like TallGuyShort said, getting invitation emails is
rather annoying, and quite insincere. Users can spot that insincerity in a
heartbeat. Sure, you'll rake in some users, but what you want is to create a
demand for the product. When I did that whole FluShirts thing, I used twitter
to message people, and within seconds I would see them tweet "haha, check out
these shirts [flushirts url]." I'm not sure as to what percentage of shirts I
sold were because of twitter referrals, but what that did at the very least
was introduce my product to others in a genuine manner to potential customers
using their friends.

Of course, to gain social validation of your product, it needs to be useful
and something people will enjoy. There are some counterexamples, like hi5,
that are fairly popular and got to that point because of their random email
invitations (I don't know who you are Aaron, Britney, and Alexa), and to that,
I'm not quite sure what to say. I guess they found a market. But as far as
virality goes, in the genuine sense, I think Facebook/Myspace/Twitter beat
hi5.

~~~
dasil003
Of course give Twitter another 18 months and people will be pretty jaded and
cynical about that too.

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axod
"How can I make my app viral" seems like asking yourself "How can I _make_
someone love me".

You don't want to _make_ users want to spread your app, you want them to
_want_ to spread your app.

The "Invite people" forms are a really bad way of doing things IMHO. It's like
asking your wife/hubby to fill in a form detailing how much she loves you.

I'd also say a good strategy is to give users something for free, that they
think should cost money - they'll be sure to tell their friends off their own
back.

Still good ideas in the original article though.

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TallGuyShort
I actually find the examples it cites extremely annoying. I don't like getting
constant emails from services just to remind me they exist, I don't like
constantly being asked to give referrals, etc...

If I like something, I go out of my way to recommend it. If not - emails
aren't going to convince me you have a good product - if people like it, it
ought to spread itself.

~~~
blhack
One thing to remember is who your target is.

Lets look at an example that I had to deal with about a week ago: The company
I work for is having a pretty large event coming up, something that our
customers would most likely be very interested in. My boss's reaction was that
we should grab the email addresses that we have harvested from our website
(signups require an email address), and send those people an email telling
them about the event.

I'm sure that the majority of you can predict what my reaction to this
was...something along the lines of "No, that is spam, that is bad, part of my
job is preventing exactly the type of email you want to send out from making
it onto our network. By harvesting email addresses from our website you are
violating our customers trust; spam spam spam, BAD!" Naturally, the PHBs did
not understand this and, despite my best efforts to stop them, they ended up
sending the spam (although I forced them to use a different mail server than
we use for sending mails).

After much anger, and much thinking, I have come to a conclusion about this. I
have changed my mind. Now...I, as a geek/admin, DESPISE the sorts of mass
mailings that they sent out, but why? I hate them because I hear "mass mail"
and immediately think "0mG G3t V14GRA N0W!", something that I hate. I know the
sorts of slimey tactics that spammers use to evade spam filters, and actively
fight against them.

The "problem" is that the majority of my dislike for "mass mailings" are
technical. I hate them because they are not what the email system was intended
for, and because they are a pain in my ass. You know what, though, they're
things that most of our customers _want_ to hear. Looking through my email
box, I see that there are some things (mailing lists, google's newsgroup
summary emails that come every day telling me what happened in
comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc that day, emails from a website called steapandcheap
[like woot, but for outdoor gear], backup confirmation emails etc.) that are
automated, and might seem evil at first (the commercial stuff like
steapandcheap especially) but are actually things that I WANT to see.

Where am I going with all of this?

There is a good chance that your hatred for the sorts of tactics he describes
here come from your nature as a geek. The unfortunate reality is that the
majority of users just simply don't care. Look at things like myspace, look at
success stories like that 15 year old girl that is making 7 figures with her
website that does myspace layouts (err..I think she is like 19 now...she was
talked about in the 30 woman web entrepreneurs making big $$ article the other
day), look at facebook applications like honesty box, these things are
HORRIFYINGLY bad from the perspective of a geek. But to a normal person, to
the type of person that is keeping the "Click here for a FREE iPoD!"
advertisers in business, and to the type of person you're probably trying to
attract, these things that we might find "obnoxious", they find useful.

It is a sad reality, but it is a reality nonetheless.

~~~
jfornear
do you not have a checkbox on your sign up form that asks if your customers
would like to receive updates? something like that would have skirted this
argument altogether. this is an example of why marketing needs to be
implemented into the development phase.

------
teej
A point to add to the discussion from the metrics perspective: the net
promoter score.

Net promoter score is an easy tool you can use to determine trends in your
users' experience. It can be used as a leading indicator of the 'N' part of
your viral coefficient. eries goes in to detail in "Net Promoter Score: an
operational tool to measure customer satisfaction"
([http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/11/net-
promot...](http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/11/net-promoter-
score-operational-tool-to.html)).

Additional reading from HN members:

jfarmer's "Three myths of Viral Growth" (<http://20bits.com/articles/three-
myths-of-viral-growth/>)

------
henryl
A counter part to the viral loop is the concept of viral channels. It is
important to realize that the more often a viral channel is exploited (see
e-mail, app notifications), the less effective it becomes until it actually
starts harming your application.

Social / Viral plays these days have a tough time because of how quickly these
channels become saturated. IMO you can disregard a lot of the rules in the
article as long as your app has network effects and a unique viral channel.

------
redorb
proflower does a lot of "follow up" in the name of repeat business. I get
emails daily like "Please accept your savings" and "please fill out our
survey" and my favorite "Your $15 shipping rebate" - all scams and wasting my
time.

I will never use proflowers again; They don't respect my time. So far I think
Amazon does it best.

------
csomar
I think the software that will grow viraly, are soft that need other users
interactions.

Let's take for example, a mafia game in Iphone, when you play, you play
offline (you are the only player) and your enemy is the computer. Will the
idea grow?

Yes, if it's good, but after 3 or 4 years, may be the device change, or
another startup takes your part. So solution? Connected gaming, here's the
same game but a little bit different

* You download the game and run it

* The game shows how to play and tell you the vitality of having other players with your to help you

* you tell 2 or 3 of your friends and play together

* game over, your friend now create their band and call another friends, and friends call friends.

you'll finish with millions user in few days, it's like a chain and it spread
quickly.

Look at most of the successful games of those kind, they are very simple but
succeed

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Maro
Recently the Facebook-equivalent in my country introduced an API for apps
similar to Facebook's and a friend created an app that is doing quite well in
terms of users. The trick was to ask the users "Do you think this app would
interest your friends?" and if they answered "Yes" it mass-invites all the
friends. I think it's against the rules of the site, but since it's good for
the site too, the rule is not enforced.

I recall that FB also started out by mass-mailing the Harvard mailing lists.

I guess virality often is just spamming or tricking the user into spamming.

~~~
teej
I just wanted to note that apps that do this on Facebook get banned very
quickly. Facebook giveth and Facebook taketh away.

~~~
swombat
As they should. That's highly unethical and, as I mention in my article, it's
unnecessary. I certainly don't condone it.

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zby
The whole 'viral' meme is rather arogant - the result is the annoying barrage
of meaningless 'updates' or solicitations to contaminate your friends. I find
the 'spreadable' metaphore promoted by Henry Jenkins
([http://henryjenkins.org/2009/04/how_sarah_spread_and_what_it...](http://henryjenkins.org/2009/04/how_sarah_spread_and_what_it_m.html))
much more socially productive.

~~~
jfarmer
IMO, that's a distinction without a difference. Viral is viral, whether there
is agency involved or not. It's about people communicating and behavior
spreading through a social network.

The downside of forcing virality is reflected in additional metrics like
retention rates and engagement.

~~~
zby
The difference is in acknowledging that the people spreading the message do
that out of their own will - not because they have been contaminated by the
meme. In other the 'spreadable' metaphor focuses the thinking on why people
want to spread the message, what they get out of it, makes the message author
to concentrate on cooperating with the spreaders - instead of trying to
contaminate them.

------
rokhayakebe
Why don't we focus on building applications that add value whether your
friends are using it or not. Hence no need to be viral. It can be useful if
only 1 person uses it or if 2M people use it.

~~~
jfarmer
Because you're going to be making more money if 2M people are using it, all
else being equal.

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c00p3r
There is also concept of so-called viral-advertisements. For example - put
some video on youtube with something "freaky", "sexy" or "funny" and put your
product placement or "message" inside. Then promote that video in some loaded
community on social network. Then your link will be spreaded like virus -
people will send that "funny" thing to friends, post in blogs and so on.

There are uncounted examples of political statements packed into some music
videos of marginal and pseudo-underground bands and the like.

