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The Epidemiology of Viral Videos

Much (virtual) ink has been spilled in praise and criticism of the phenomenon of viral videos that continue to sweep the Internet. Given the numbers involved, it is no surprise that marketers were quick to get in on the act. Companies eager to pitch potential buyers are eager to do whatever they can to make their message “go viral”, often by creating witty, amusing, and just plain odd video content to entertain the masses. An entire industry has sprung up to “seed” online communities with these videos, provide the tools to share them, and kick off an epidemic. But what do these “social media experts” really know about epidemiology?

Infectious Agents

We humans are surrounded by viruses, bacteria, fungi, and other bugs (let’s annoy virologists and call them “germs”) on a daily basis, but only a very few make us sick. Similarly, online sites like YouTube are packed with videos, with more uploaded every day, yet only a few are viewed much. One factor in both cases is the inherent quality of the “bug”. Biological “germs” are effective only in specific environments. Most YouTube videos aren’t worth watching.

So the first hurdle to starting an outbreak is to create something potentially infectious. Marketers like to fall back on the easy winners: Talking animals, cute babies, slapstick humor, celebrity appearances, popular songs, and the rest. A good potentially-viral video is like a good joke: It has to have a setup that pulls you in and a punchline that delivers. Most “viral videos” meet this definition, either by careful planning or serendipitous accident.

Many corporate videos fail at this stage, with no potential to “go viral” from the start. Most are stoic and straight, inspiring little interest except for their intrinsic message. Too many contain lame attempts at humor or slapstick that come off as embarrassing or even insulting to the target audience – see Tom P’s excellent piece, Make ‘Em Laugh! But Be Careful… No video will gather many views unless it is compelling.

Transmission

But not all infectious agents cause an epidemic, just like most “viral content” languishes with very few viewers. People must act for infections to spread. Biological agents have developed amazing mechanisms to spread between hosts, enticing them to act and riding along as they move. The proliferation of “share this” buttons in the online world is just one of many mechanisms intended to spread content to others. Just like natural “germs”, marketers have tried to make it as easy as possible for viral content to be shared.

Transmission is often dependent on the amount of work the host has to do: The easier it is to transmit a disease, the more likely it is to spread. One tactic employed by many (including Sharethrough) is the “seeded tweet”. A user watches a funny video or reads an amusing article and clicks “Share this”. The site then generates a canned Twitter message, complete with a description and shortened link, and even opens Twitter in their web browser. All the user has to to is press “Tweet” and the comment, link and all, is broadcast for their followers to see. Some sites, like myYearbook, make this simple, allowing marketers to embed their own suggested tweets, while others, like Facebook, contain sharing within their walled gardens.

Effective transmission mechanisms should also enhance uptake in potential targets for infection. Taking another clue from biological agents, marketers try to make these messages as enticing as possible. Research has shown that the effectiveness of a headline has a great impact on viewership. This is why, for example, Sharethrough’s message on behalf of EMC was “CHiPs Erik Estrada in Speeding Ticket FAIL” rather than something more descriptive like “YouTube speeding-ticket video touting EMC’s 20% guarantee”. Their chosen message includes nostalgia (CHiPs), celebrity (Erik Estrada), real-life (speeding ticket) and Internet meme (FAIL) – a veritable link-bait jackpot!

Susceptibility

A virus or video that is infectious and presented with a transmission mechanism might never spread without a susceptible host present. A tree fungus won’t get far in the desert, regardless of its inherent quality and constant winds to spread it. Similarly, a hilarious video advertising baseball equipment wouldn’t be very effective in countries where soccer is dominant. It might spread, but the intended result, the sale of bats and balls, would not be attained.

This is where conventional advertisements so often fail. How many of us have catchy jingles memorized but never buy the product featured? I’m sure most of us can name a whole range of luxury cars, soft drinks, children’s’ breakfast cereals, and feminine products that we would never consider purchasing. The infectious agent reached us but we were simply not susceptible to it.

Unlike the biological world, where a virus doesn’t “care” which type of host it infects, marketing is all about targeting potential customers. Children loved the frogs and dogs used by Budweiser to advertise their beer, but (hopefully) were not much of an influence on beer-selection decisions. This is doubly troubling to the business-to-business marketing professional. Potential buyers are few and far between, and successful campaigns will result in many puzzled non-buyers for every interested prospect!

Cost and Benefit

Advertising, like biology, is naturally limited by the effort involved in spreading an agent. Ad buyers must carefully weigh the cost of placing a spot against the potential reward of generating a sale, knowing full well that they will miss their target some percent of the time. This cost/benefit analysis plays out constantly, with general-audience products (soft drinks, snack foods, and the like) featured widely and vertical solutions (enterprise storage arrays) often consigned to specialized outlets.

Yet, odd pairings often make sense. Advertisers learned long ago that middle-age women and young children often watch television together, resulting in cross-polination of ad content between cartoons and soap operas. And sometimes it makes sense to cast an extremely wide net in hopes of catching one or two very big fish, explaining ads for web hosting and other business products during sporting events and at airports. Although most viewers will scratch their heads, a few potential buyers offset the cost. Another factor to consider is that public companies have a secondary product to sell to a broader audience: Their stock. While their ads are primarily intended as an appeal for sales, they also serve to demonstrate to the general public that they are successful companies worth investing in.

Although assessing the motives of an advertiser may seem difficult, it is actually exceedingly simple. Rest assured that the buyer performed a cost/benefit analysis and determined that the value of that particular placement exceeded its cost. Their analysis may prove incorrect, but their motives are simple.

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Digging Deeper: AlterSeekers, myYearbook, Sharethrough, and Spam

This morning I demonstrated an inept marketing “experiment” by AlterSeekers gone awry for EMC. It involved comment spam on some of the best-known enterprise storage industry insider blogs and EMC cut it off quickly. But this analysis turned up something else rather peculiar: An apparent hack on teen chat site myYearbook to spam video links on Twitter and generate views and buzz. Amazingly, EMC are again involved. Is this another face of this morning’s off-the-rails experiment?

Viral or Virulent Videos?

While exploring the fascinating world of link spam, I happened across the Twitter account of @LisaValentineNY (not linked), probably an AlterSeekers employee. I noted that the only thing she had posted recently were spammy @replies to Twitter users advertising Crucial-brand computer memory. Every reply included an odd trademark character (indicating a cut-and-paste job) and used the same bit.ly link, one created with the account of AlterSeekers employee Brent McLean. Clearly, Crucial was involved in the same type of anti-social marketing campaign as EMC.

This got me thinking. I remembered seeing some EMC videos tweeted recently, one involving former CHiPS star, Erik Estrada and another with pro golfer, Billy Andrade. They were somewhat amusing, but EMC, being an enterprise IT company, isn’t really a general audience draw. So I wasn’t surprised to see just a few thousand vides. Yet a glance at YouTube this morning shows an amazing 215k and 413k views for these videos. Either EMC’s videos really did go viral or they were wrapped up in this nasty spam business as well.

Aggregate Linkage

It’s easy to see bit.ly links to a given site. I just copied the YouTube URL into bit.ly and clicked on the aggregate link. This was eye-popping. Literally hundreds of tweets linked to the video, each from a different user. Yet every tweet was exactly identical:

CHiPs Erik Estrada in Speeding Ticket FAIL http://bit.ly/ad15nG

Either a hundred random users decided to tweet the exact same message and link to their followers or something fishy was going on here.

Random Tweets?

Two things immediately stuck out in this list:

  1. No one included the EMC name (which is included in the YouTube listing), only the general-audience Erik Estrada and CHiPs references.
  2. The tweeters were not the usual enterprise IT folks one would expect, judging by their cutesy names.

I picked a few at random to see who these EMC fans were (try it yourself!). They appeared to be teens posting teen-speak including quotes, photo ratings, and Q&A. In most cases (that I looked at), the users had never tweeted using any client other than “myYearbook Share” which appears to be a Facebook clone that links to social media accounts, including Twitter.

But each account also included a few exceptionally odd tweets. Along with the myYearbook junk were these spammy links to EMC’s videos. And lo and behold, most also included links the same Crucial Memory video being spammed by Lisa Valentine! What could be going on here?

Breaking and Tweeting?

This is truly weird. If myYearbook was inserting “sponsored” tweets along with their users junk, one would expect it to also come from the “myYearbook Share” client, too. But, without exception, these spam links came from “web”. This was especially notable for the (many) users who had never posted anything from the web client, and it smells like a hack.

It really isn’t credible that these random teens all decided to tweet cut-and-paste links to EMC and Crucial videos. And it really isn’t believable that they all decided to use the web client for the first and only time to do it. Either they were enticed to do it (“win a contest?”) or someone or something is posting “on their behalf”. Either way, this stinks.

Perhaps myYearbook has been hacked and someone is using users’ passwords to post these links. Perhaps the company is in on it, though there seem to be few complaints about them. Or perhaps someone is harvesting Twitter accounts from myYearbook and getting the passwords from somewhere else. Regardless, someone is doing something naughty here!

Who’s Responsible This Time?

Although Crucial and EMC are linked through AlterSeekers, I’m not sure they’re responsible for these tweets. There are a few links found in many of these users’ suspicious tweets, and all were created with the bit.ly account of another company, Sharethrough (not linked). Calling itself “The Leading Social Video Seeding Platform For Top Brands And Agencies”, Sharethrough appears to be some kind of viral marketing machine. But it’s unclear if they’re responsible for all this spam, either.

At the end of the day, responsibility lies with the companies that are benefiting from these shenanigans.

  1. Sharethrough is selling “video seeding” services that are using unsavory means
  2. AlterSeekers is selling “social media marketing” services that are either inept or obnoxious
  3. Their clients (EMC, Crucial, and someone called “Rhett and Link”) are getting page- and YouTube views from clearly inauthentic sources

Each of these companies must investigate upstream to discover what their providers are doing on their behalf. And each should inform all of us about just what is going on!

And it all started with a spam comment on my blog.

Update: Not Hacked But Seeded

I suppose it’s sometimes easier to find trouble when one goes looking for it. I received an email from Dan Greenberg, CEO and Co-Founder of Sharethrough explaining these links. His site “seeds” viral videos to a variety of platforms which invite users to share them with their friends. As Dan says, “When a user clicks Tweet it takes them to Twitter and suggests a pre-defined tweet for them, which the user can edit and then post.  This functionality is similar to what you might see on any blog or video site.”

Assuming he’s being straight with me (which I do) there was no hacking or underhanded chicanery involved in these tweets. The users shared them on their own accord. This explains why they all have identical text and bit.ly links as well as the odd “via web” source. He suggests that TechCrunch, Mashable, and others do the same.

Chuck Hollis agrees in the comments below, comparing this to the paid advertisements that some blogs (including my own) include. He goes on to suggest that it’s not so bad to pay a company to promote a video online in order to make it go viral, presumably as long as it’s not in “a blog or a focused community.”

Let me be straight: I have no problem with banner ads in general (as long as they’re not misleading) and jumped to the wrong conclusion about Sharethrough. But the core question remains: Why would an enterprise-focused company like EMC to promote their products with viral videos that apparently appeal mainly to teens? The CHiPs video was “liked” 23 times, “disliked” 10 times, and drew 22 comments with almost 250,000 views. The Andrade video has almost 415,000 views but only 25 “likes”, 6 “dislikes”, and 44 bizarre mostly single-word comments.

If these videos really appealed to people, wouldn’t they be commenting more? And if they were really hitting their target, wouldn’t the comments mention something (anything) about EMC or its products? Setting aside the issue of whether or not the method promotion is valid, surely the result isn’t what was desired. I return to my closing statement from the previous article: Isn’t fresh sushi better than canned spam?

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A Lesson In Failed Social Media Marketing

This morning, someone left a comment on a 10 month-old blog post about EMC Corporation’s products over at Gestalt IT. Although the writer, “Brian,” identified himself as “EMC Social Outreach Team”, the short message seemed somewhat spammy, including a bit.ly link to one of that company’s marketing promotions. Further investigation reveals what looks to be an inept social media marketing maneuver by “integrated sales promotions” firm, AlterSeekers. Let’s use it as a case study in how not to do social media marketing.

The saga continues! Read my follow-up, Digging Deeper: AlterSeekers, myYearbook, Sharethrough, and Spam

Social Media Outreach

There aren’t hard and fast rules, but most agree that honesty, credibility, and real human interaction are critical for social media. No one likes talking to a robot, and we hate being spammed by them. But not all robots are mechanical: Many companies are hiring outside firms to spread the word about their products and services with real human agents. Some are laughably inept (like the dozens of poorly-worded comments posted to my blog from “Ugg Boots For Sale” and “Nike Air Force”), while others are probably fantastically well-executed (and thus unavailable as examples).

Skill aside, it is the intent of a comment or other social interaction that determines its quality. Blog comments are intended for discussion of the issues presented in the blog post. Links to other sources are perfectly acceptable if they advance the discussion, and the conversation often takes a turn into unrelated areas. None of this is a problem. Simply put, this is the essence of social media.

Imagine you are having a conversation in a public place and someone stops and joins in. You wouldn’t mid if they were really interested, and would probably be pleased if they had some special insight or suggested you talk to a friend in the business. But what if they stopped by, pretended to be interested, but instead were being paid to interject an advertisement for the sushi place across the street? Even if your conversation centered on sushi from the start, the stranger’s intent makes their intrusion unwelcome.

Hello, Brian

Now let’s turn to the comments by “Brian.” The post at Gestalt IT was written in September, 2009 and is an exploration of EMC’s plans unifying their storage array platform. It was pretty popular last Fall, and one of the authors eventually went to work for EMC. But readership has declined since, and no one had commented in nine months.

Then, along came “Brian” with the following insightful remark:

“Great thoughts on EMC! I’m curious if you’ve heard of EMC’s new 20% capacity advantage guarantee? Check out this paper – and we challenge anyone to beat it! http://bit.ly/ao57rm — Brian, EMC Social Outreach Team”

This short comment is not a contribution to the discussion. “Great thoughts on EMC” can be translated as “this post is about EMC but I have nothing to add to it.” The rest is an advertisement, plain and simple, for a marketing campaign centered around EMC’s “20% capacity advantage guarantee.” The fact that they used bit.ly to shorten the link proves this – they’re tracking clickthroughs with it!

One positive element of the comment is the identification of “Brian” as a member of “EMC Social Outreach Team.” This is much more transparent than most spammy comments, and shows that the perpetrator was more inept than devious. But the fact that the Disqus profile belonging to “Brian” was not filled out was less than transparent.

Dissecting Brian

So who is Brian and what is the EMC Social Outreach Team? A quick check on his (unclaimed) Disqus profile reveals that “Brian” made similar comments on seven industry blogs. All but the one on Gestalt IT contained unique human-written and readable commentary, but none was in any way insightful or related to the discussion at hand. And all included that same bit.ly link. This, and the fact that “Brian” hadn’t commented anywhere else, is clear proof that this was advertising and nothing more.

Happily, bit.ly link statistics are open to the public. A quick run over to the tracking page for that link (http://bit.ly/ao57rm+) reveals that “Brian” got 35 clickthroughs in his short career as a comment spammer. Not great. It also reveals a tracking parameter in the URL, “SOC-UNIFIEDGUARANTEE-Social”. Finally, it shows that “Brian” used a bit.ly login belonging to “amberbragas” – now we’re getting somewhere!

“Amber Bragas” is a fairly unusual name (see Google), and LinkedIn contains just one person by that name. She works for a company called “AlterSeekers”. A quick search reveals the Twitter page for @AlterSeekers (not linked), which calls itself “an integrated sales promotions firm” and claims “We get marketing and we get results.”

Jump over to the AlterSeekers web site (not linked) and one is greeted with a flash header featuring a photo of none other than Amber Bragas! Considering the mission of AlterSeekers, the connection to IT industry companies, and the bit.ly connection, I feel safe in assuming that “Brian” is actually a spam bot employed by this company to drive traffic to EMC’s guarantee. He could even be AlterSeekers employee, Brian De La Torre.

I’m going to guess that this was a “proof of concept” pitch by AlterSeekers to win EMC’s business. There is one click from July 16 (perhaps a demo), then more clicks and comments starting on July 19. Similar comments were posted by “Marlon” (De Jesus?) and “Justin“.

It would appear for the offending party searched Google for “emc unified storage systems -oracle“, an amusing construct that reveals the intent of the perpetrator. Why exclude Oracle? They left a comment as “Brian” or “Marlon” on just about every blog post that search returns. The visitor came from Port Washington, New York (home of AlterSeekers) and the IP address traces as “alter seekers inc.” I guess we can be pretty certain who the guilty party is!

Bye, Brian

Whoever Brian is, he’s not part of some “EMC Social Outreach Team”, nor is he “making authentic connections with your customers.” He’s spamming blogs with tracked marketing links. And he’s also apparently out of a job.

EMC Marketing CTO, Chuck Hollis (who I will link to) responded this morning with two tweets that speak for themselves:

We found out about it yesterday morning, and quickly shut it down. Somebody’s bad idea, quickly fixed. (1)

and

Someone thought it would be clever to go to an external “social service”. Imagine our collective horror …(2)

‘Nuff said, Chuck. EMC is really astonishingly good at real social outreach. They don’t need this pathetic and spammy “social outreach” by a third party. Chuck quickly took responsibility and shut it down, demonstrating the correct approach to this sort of thing.

Lessons Learned

Social media is about being genuine and, well, social. You can’t hire an outsider to do this for you. Your customers will see through inept attempts to “join the conversation.” As AlterSeekers own web site notes, one has to make “authentic connections” not post transparent blog comment spam.

This is the core problem facing so many “social media marketing” firms. They employ people who aren’t part of the conversation, use inappropriate metrics, and try to entice non-genuine behavior. Regardless of whether you sell flowers, cars, or IT equipment, you cannot outsource the conversation. You must rely on genuinely engaged and authentic commentators.

One must also consider the goals of this sort of campaign. Clearly, AlterSeekers was trying to entice people to click through to that one link. When social media goals focus too narrowly on a single specific action, they tend to look like spam and go off the rails. Goals should be broader, guiding the conversation and spreading the message rather than just taking a single (albeit measurable) action like clicking a link.

Returning to our example of the street corner conversation, what if the sushi restaurant encouraged sushi lovers to spread the word about their love of sashimi? They would undoubtedly encourage more sushi eating! And what if they offered discounts or supported a sushi club? They would drive real traffic and, more importantly, a devoted audience. Fresh sushi sure beats canned spam!

The saga continues! Read my follow-up, Digging Deeper: AlterSeekers, myYearbook, Sharethrough, and Spam

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9 Business Lessons I Learned From Baseball

Baseball may seem inscrutable to the uninitiated, but it’s like no other sport to us true believers. And, as I’ve told my little-leaguer son on many occasions, baseball can teach a whole raft of lessons (and vice versa). I guess nine innings gives everyone a chance to ponder life, so I decided to jot down my own list of nine business lessons I learned from baseball.

Adjust to the ground rules wherever you play

Newcomers to baseball are always shocked to learn that each ballpark has its own local rules, right down to the dimensions of the outfield. Once they become familiar with the game, they are similarly amazed to see how a few rule changes alters the style of play between the American and National Leagues. Life is like that, though. Each of my customers has different expectations, and what is fine for one might be off limits for another. It’s up to each of us to adjust to the local style and make the most of it.

Roll with the bad calls

As enforcement of sporting rules and regulations becomes increasingly high-tech, baseball stands with international football as stalwart believers in the on-the-field call. Sometimes you get away with mischief; sometimes the call goes against you. You can argue and holler, but that’s going to get you ejected in short order. The best strategy is to roll with the bad calls and move on with the game.

Everything can change in a moment

Which brings us to lesson number 2: The next play can change everything. Daniel Nava hit a grand slam on the first major league pitch he saw. The Red Sox got creamed by the arch-rival Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship and were three outs away from elimination when the winds shifted. Eight straight wins later they were holding the World Series trophy for the first time since 1918. It’s important to remain faithful to the cause and believe you can win. Resurrection is possible if you make the right plays. Just ask Steve Jobs and the rest at Apple!

Wait for your pitch


Patience at the plate is a singular virtue for baseball success. It’s tempting to swing at everything that comes your way, hoping to connect with something, but it’s wiser to check your swing. Hitting in baseball is a psychological exercise, with the pitcher (and catcher) trying to guess what the batter will swing on. There are plenty of similar situations in life; not all opportunities are equal. Give each a good look, back out when you need to, but be ready to swing when something comes right down the middle!

Follow through – there’s a penalty for a balk

Pitching a baseball is all about mechanics – controlling the body and completing the full pitching motion is critical. There’s even a penalty for a “balk”, or stopping part way through. Many have said that life is all about showing up, and business is like this too. Either step aside and regroup before you start or complete what you have committed to.

It’s a long season – give it time, trade up, then play what you have

Managers and coaches are like poker players, pondering what they have and considering their options. The regular major league baseball season includes 162 games and stretches across half the year, allowing plenty of time for players and teams to overcome a slump or injury. General managers have four months to tweak their lineup, trading and dealing to get a better team. But the coaching staff has to make the team work no matter what they have. I see the same dynamic playing out in business, with the board swapping executives in and out while the staff tries to get their work done. But there comes a time when the board must back off and let their team play.

Superstars are fun to watch, but it takes a team to win

It’s rare for a baseball player to appear in every game, and even superstar pitchers can only start once or twice a week. Baseball requires a reliable team on the field, in the dugout and bullpen, and in the back office. The greatest mistake a manager can make is spending too much on a just few great pitchers or sluggers and hoping their brilliant play can make up for everyone else. A wiser choice is to put together a whole staff of under-valued over-achievers who want to play and win.

You have to adjust your play as the game progresses

One of the biggest changes in the modern game of baseball is the increasing use of specialist relief pitchers. Managers like Tony La Russa staffed their bullpen with specialists for each situation and inning, noting that the requirements changed as the game progressed. There is some controversy about over-specialization, but adaptability to changing situations is certainly a formula for success. The game changes as time passes and the final inning nears, and a good manager will shift his team to maximize success.

Even the best strike out sometimes

This is the most important lesson of all. Even the best batters strike out half the time, and even the best teams in history lost a quarter or more of their games. Baseball will never see a no-loss season like the 2007 Patriots, and neither will life. We must work hard, play to win, and dust ourselves off and try again when we lose.