http://thefifthwave.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/kony-2012-and-the-art-of-going-viral/
The memetic analysis in this post is quite good. Nevertheless, it ends with the following bleak quote:
"The principle of uncertainty hovers around viral messages. Despite the hopes and wishes – and billions of dollars – of marketing departments, it’s impossible to predict when content will go viral. +Duncan Watts has shown this conclusively. But it isn’t impossible to explain the effect, and there are good reasons to do so. A viral message is a probe sent into the deep space of the information sphere, allowing us a glimpse, however partial and brief, of the actions and predilections at work there."
This strikes me as wrong. Not only can you explain the effect, but these explanations will undoubtedly inform better and more powerful memes that spread ever faster in an ever more connected network. The whole thing is a monster feedback loop, and it is improving. The author suggests that each meme is a shot in the dark, when clearly the data suggests that we are getting better.
There are obviously things you can do to improve the chances of creating viral content. The Kony episode doesn't show us that you can't predict when content will go viral. Of course you can; you can even predict the weather, if you model it right. What Kony shows us is instead is that you can't fake a virus. The spreading of content requires the genuine participation of the network, and although you can do a lot of things to encourage and promote its spreading, you can't force it to happen, and you can't stop it from happening. If it happens, it happens on the back of the network itself. If it happens, content creators can't do much more than sit back and hold on to their sanity.
Just because you can predict the weather doesn't mean you can make it rain.
Kony 2012 and the art of going viral
The online advocacy video Kony 2012 can only be described as a digital enormity, breaking all records and rules. By one measure, it reached 100 million views in six days, fastest in the history o…
Interesting take. I would recommend reading Duncan Watts and Paul Ormerod as an antidote to the belief we can predict viral messaging. It hasn’t been done, and – if those two smart people are right – it probably can’t be done.
We can’t predict the weather. Weathermen simply give us the historical percentages of the different kinds of weather for the conditions which they think will hold tomorrow. So weather “prediction” looks backward, not forward.
Viral messages work within a system far more complex and random than the weather – and we have a lot less data on it. Cloud formations don’t choose to change direction, whereas people, all too often, do just that. I think one can probably “predict” a pre-viral context or condition, but even that might be a stretch…
Anyway, I looked at some of these questions, from an analytical rather than messaging perspective, in an earlier post:
http://thefifthwave.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/analyzing-events/