I think you’re right about the popularity angle. I considered adding “conformity” as a third viral vector. Ultimately, I decided not to include it in the article, because it didn’t feel like a vector that we can design products to influence. It feels more like a context. But I agree with you. I think this is probably like men wearing Levi’s blue jeans in the north east and south, or wearing Wranglers in the western United States. It would be interesting to see how the market share numbers for blue jeans vary by geography.

Please let us know if you come up with a way to drive your initiative virally using the “viral product management” approach (versus viral marketing). Would love to hear about what you try, and how it works for you!

I think once the word does get out and people here that “everyone’s using it” the popularity of a product ends up being incentive for many. People want to find out what all the fuss is about.

Also – congrats to David – he now has the first entry into the conversation contest!

The reach of a social network depends on gateways between communications channels as much as it depends on devices. If you use EM, and I use email, we won’t talk much. I’d have to get EM. Then, I’d have to reconfigure my communications to fit the EM mediation.

Life was never homogeneous, so why would my devices present me with a homogeneous world. Viral need not foster a homogeneous world for the user. Viral spreads the infrastructure for communications. Once spread, we communicate or not.

I know I have downloaded a lot of communications devices that I use only once. Eventually, they get uninstalled. The content was not compelling. So much for being a channel. You can work the compelling component separately from the infrastructural component. Viral is exposure. Sticky requires exposure. I’ve got to achieve the trial. Then, in the trial, I have to sell you. And, if there is only one person that you communicate with via that channel, it will be a hard sale.

I’m looking at viral with the goal of technology adoption, not so much the spread of a single product. The viral product acquires a specific population as quickly as possible. I’d even go so far as to code a variant product to acquire another distinct population. Viral happens in Moore’s bowling ally. Viral along with social network mapping happens in the chasam.

I stress network effects and the vendor capturing their increasing return. I’ve seen many vendors refuse to capture their increasing return, so yes, viral would be a hard sell to them as well.

With my current client, a start-up in Austin with a consumer SaaS offering, we explicitly developed a persona to represent our first wave of early adopters. And we’ve prioritized development of the capabilities of the product with their needs in mind. We also keep an eye on identifying the capabilities that would encourage them to promote the product to their friends. This is actually the source of inspiration for me in writing up my thoughts on viral product management.

Every time a “great” product is created, it makes the world a little bit better.

I think, in relation to this article, that is a measure of the potential value of the network implicitly, but not to the individual users, as the number of users grows – assuming there is a “network effect” that can be monetized. This still also doesn’t address the “how valuable is the network to an individual who is in the network” question…