Thinking deeply about virality is probably worthwhile, though Im not sure I agree with the breakdown here.<p>"Incentivized" is an optional attribute that applies to the other four, not just word of mouth.
Anyone have any really good sources to learn to think about virality?<p>I'm getting a few insights reading this (e.g. demonstration virality now seems stupid obvious but I had never thought about it before ), but I'd go a little deeper and have no clue where to start.<p>I've tried several different Google searches but came up with mostly garbage.
I'd love to see some proper data on "incentivized word of mouth". When I engage in that, it's almost always normal word of mouth plus a mutual cash-grab. Compare how often you decide "I should spread the word about this for money" to how often you go "This is really great. Oh! Let me recommend you and we'll both save a couple bucks." Hell, I've told existing users "I want this app, recommend me and we'll grab some cash?"<p>I guess it might still improve retention for the new users, which is probably Uber's goal, but I'm skeptical about whether incentives promote more sharing, or just raise the price of existing shares.
I'm always amused when I see an article like this at the top of Hacker News. I come here for interesting technical articles and discussion on computer science topics, not this sort-of marketing noise^H^H^H^H^H advice targeted at "entrepreneurs".<p>I wonder how much overlap there is between upvoters of <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12539522" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12539522</a> (L4 microkernels...) and this article (Five Types of Virality). It would be very interesting if Hacker News could release some anonymized voting information so we could visualize our community's various clusters.