Viral Loops

By Tommy Leung on 05/20/2008 in Marketing

Viral Loops are the next big thing in digital marketing. A former advertising executive at MySpace, Andrew Chen, says that viral loops are the “most advanced direct-marketing strategy being developed in the world right now.” David Armano at Ad Age compares it to Velcro. So what is a viral loop? Chen defines it as:

The steps a user goes through between entering the site to inviting the next set of new users

Chen goes on to use Slide.com’s picture slide show widget and YouTube as examples of viral loops. The YouTube example is easily apparent as every YouTube video ends with the ability for the viewer to share the video with their network and then those people can do the same and so on and so forth. I’m sure every blogger or person part of a social network has done this before. I frequently post YouTube videos on Facebook to share with everyone in my network.

In a fantastic Fast Company article, the author calls viral loops as “perhaps the most significant business accelerant to hit Silicon Valley since the search engine.” Viral loops leverage the power of compounding to generate massive numbers of users in a relatively short period of time.

Viral loops is not necessarily a new concept. It is used in the world outside the Internet and many Internet phenomenons have employed the power of viral loops. Now we have a name and a defined concept. However, the term viral loop or viral expansion loop has yet to become a buzz word–just Google it and you’ll find that there isn’t that much on it.

Sometimes the simplest concepts have the biggest impacts. I can’t wait to see what new ideas employing viral loops will lead to–I already can’t imagine a life without YouTube.

By Tommy Leung