I am always on the search for the latest and greatest social media applications. I am often too quick to sign up for a service based solely on hype. Perhaps most of us technophiles are an easy sell. Mention the word “beta” and you have a new instant subscriber, no questions asked. Whether or not I stick around with the service is a different story. Most of the beta applications and sites I sign up for are just for establishing a presence on that network. Often these sites will lack innovation, and never attract an active user base. Often these services stay in beta. They usually die a silent slow web 2.0 death. The ones that pull ahead and start to establish themselves will continue to receive my support. An example of this is Toluu.
What prompts you to join a new service in the first place? It’ is often some form of viral marketing. Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily, as simply defined by Wikipedia. What happened on FriendFeed was a classic case of successful viral marketing.
Yesterday, as I was making my usual morning rounds in Google reader, I came across a headline from Daniel Smith who published a post titled “Introducing Streamulo.us:The Answer To Your Aggregation Frustration.” Naturally, anything to do with social media or content aggregation will grab my attention with ease. The post, which was was done purely as satire, talked about Streamulo.us.
What is Streamulo.us?———————–Quite simply put, Streamulo.us, which is currently in private pre-alpha (omega?) testing, is the aggregator for all your aggregators. It is the lifestream for your lifestreams. It’s the…ok, ok, you get it. It’s pretty darn amazing.———————-
————
I had to read the post twice before I realized that it was satire. I shared the story via Google Reader because I thought it was funny. I effectively, unknowingly launched a viral campaign. Once it took off, I decided to have a little fun with it on FriendFeed.
Despite the hilarity, I thought most who read the post on FriendFeed would have seen it for what it was, a satirical piece. Sadly, most never clicked the actual link and read Daniel’s post. Some people actually read it, and thought it was real. There were clues on the post and on FriendFeed. It took some time for people to catch on. When news of this potential FriendFeed killer got out on FF, the herd quickly followed and it became very viral,very quickly.
Within a few hours it took on a life of it’s own. It was shared, bookmarked and discussed throughout FriendFeed and Twitter. Daniel took it a step further, adding an invite form! This was for all you early adapters to signup for “pre-alpha testing.”
Prominent blogger, Jennifer Van Grove was skeptical at first and nearly fell for it. Justin Korn fell for it as well and realized shorty after that something was not kosher. Hao Chen was blinded, but he quickly realized that something was not kosher. I must say thank you to Hao Chen for being a good sport, and because he also coined the saying ” I’ve been shiny-object-rolled.”
While this was a very interesting insight into the power of social media, it shows that a majority of us are always searching for that next new shiny toy. We all to often get caught up in the hype, and will believe anything that’s thrown at us with little or no source checking. Some times we need to sit back and take things in, let them marinate a bit, before rushing to be on the front lines.
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19 Responses to Viral on FriendFeed
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CONNECT WITH MIKE
I admit, I was “fished in” a bit at first, but then the tone of the post caused some alarm bells to go off. I completely missed the whole “sign-up page” thing… I might have fallen for that, too.
Good lesson for us all.
brilliant story, thank you for the laugh after lunch
HAHA I knew it!
But submitted my address anyway just in case I was wrong
Great post Mike. I commented on the FriendFeed thread too (see below) but just wanted to say thanks for being such a great sport and giving the story that little push into FF-viral territory. Nothing could have proved the point better.
By the way, I'm working on a post-mortem of my own and I'll drop by later and post the URL. Cheers!
@Shay Don't worry about it – you were in good company
I'll also point you here: http://friendfeed.com/e/f54f86ec-1262-4ead-8d05... in case you were worried about spam.
Daniel
Thanks Daniel
No problem. Sorry for the typo in your name above. Oops.
I admit, I was “fished in” a bit at first, but then the tone of the post caused some alarm bells to go off. I completely missed the whole “sign-up page” thing… I might have fallen for that, too.
Good lesson for us all.
brilliant story, thank you for the laugh after lunch
Thanks for calling me a prominent blogger
. The blog post I did on Streamulo.us, after of course I knew it was a prank (prank is actually a tag on that post), confirmed a few things for me:
1. all of us want to be first – maybe it's the techcrunch or twitter effect, but a majority of us feel like being one of the first to join a beta site is something to be envious of
2. our attention spans are short – we're not even reading anymore
3. you can generate buzz for a website without a website
It was fun and insightful experiment to say the least.
Confession: after the first read through of the post, I did add my email to signup form…I was suspicious of the prank, but still tempted enough to get sucked in a bit
HAHA I knew it!
But submitted my address anyway just in case I was wrong
Great post Mike. I commented on the FriendFeed thread too (see below) but just wanted to say thanks for being such a great sport and giving the story that little push into FF-viral territory. Nothing could have proved the point better.
By the way, I’m working on a post-mortem of my own and I’ll drop by later and post the URL. Cheers!
@Shay Don’t worry about it – you were in good company
I’ll also point you here: http://friendfeed.com/e/f54f86ec-1262-4ead-8d05... in case you were worried about spam.
Daniel
Thanks Daniel
No problem. Sorry for the typo in your name above. Oops.
Jennifer – I couldn't agree more. Especially about the buzz-without-a-website bit. Although you do have to be willing to spend an inordinate amount of time 'shopping up a screenshot
And the tag on post was “satire”, not “prank”, but yeah, not many seemed to notice that. I only point it out because I think there was hopefully valuable commentary hidden in the post, making it something more than an episode of Punk'd: Web 2.0 Edition
Hopefully.
Daniel, I honestly think that your experiment acted like a mirror to the entire web/tech industry at the moment – it's very reflexive. Good job on those screenshots and the logo. Very convincing.
Btw, I was referring to the tag I used on my own post (“prank”), which few picked up on as well.
Thanks for calling me a prominent blogger
. The blog post I did on Streamulo.us, after of course I knew it was a prank (prank is actually a tag on that post), confirmed a few things for me:
1. all of us want to be first – maybe it’s the techcrunch or twitter effect, but a majority of us feel like being one of the first to join a beta site is something to be envious of
2. our attention spans are short – we’re not even reading anymore
3. you can generate buzz for a website without a website
It was fun and insightful experiment to say the least.
Confession: after the first read through of the post, I did add my email to signup form…I was suspicious of the prank, but still tempted enough to get sucked in a bit
Jennifer – I couldn’t agree more. Especially about the buzz-without-a-website bit. Although you do have to be willing to spend an inordinate amount of time ‘shopping up a screenshot
And the tag on post was “satire”, not “prank”, but yeah, not many seemed to notice that. I only point it out because I think there was hopefully valuable commentary hidden in the post, making it something more than an episode of Punk’d: Web 2.0 Edition
Hopefully.
Daniel, I honestly think that your experiment acted like a mirror to the entire web/tech industry at the moment – it’s very reflexive. Good job on those screenshots and the logo. Very convincing.
Btw, I was referring to the tag I used on my own post (“prank”), which few picked up on as well.
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