Blog 11: Virality Check

Viral marketing is an almost imperative means of promoting whatever good a person is trying to sell, especially with today's fast-paced vibe. The general population's overall attention span has dwindled drastically in today's climate where you can get almost anything you want hot and ready at the press of a button. The only things that tend to "stick" to people's minds are typically controversial, like things that could be potentially offensive to a select group of people for example. Even then, conversation only lasts about a couple of weeks.

We could look at the term "viral" and compare it to "virus" (this made me curious enough to look up the root "vir" which is Latin for man)--when comparing the two they could almost be synonymous. I read on in the article about Viral Marketing, and what took my eye was a sentence that read along the lines of " If an advertisement reaches a "susceptible" user, that user becomes "infected" and shares the idea with others." Like spreading a virus. The idea of creating a virus-like effect is genius in terms of developing a successful marketing scheme, and the internet is a vehicle that just puts the virus into overdrive.