Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

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Today's video isn't viral because it doesn't spread under the force of its own hype. Today have plugged and promoted it, completely missing the point of viral content entirely.

It doesn't matter who creates and promotes the content, it isn't a viral thing if the people creating it use the mainstream media to promote it.

Simples.

Congratulations on discovering that gaming works and is easier for those with massive reach. Hasn't the print media been guilty of slipping advertorials to the public for decades?

Compare and contrast Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Click's deliberate (and quite probably illegal) hijacking of 22,000 vulnerable PCs to demonstrate that it could be done, presumably in the public interest.

There are far more worthwhile concerns for you to expose: why are you bothering with semantics?

My first thought would be - do you get your readers by the strength of referrals, or by self-promotion via Twitter, subscriptions and by purely being on the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ website? If the latter, then it's not really viral. Viruses spread by themselves without external influence - like that subservient chicken game promotion thing. Whilst it's been exploited by marketing to various intents, that doesn't preclude it from being viral. But for a *cool* instance of viral marketing, read William Gibson's fantastic 'Pattern Recognition'.

Bothering with semantics is a *good thing*.
Viral, in marketers terms, generally refers to 'free' distribution of a relatively cheaply made films opposed to buying spots on TV, creating buzz and commentary on the ol' interwebs.
Anyone promoting a viral film would die for exposure on any channel at all. This little viral got no publicity and a million views. this little viral got lots of publicity and four million views. and this little viral got bad publicity and was withdrawn by Sony pretty quickly

If Ben Stiller was parodying the viral video in his marketing for Tropic Thunder, wouldn't that indicate the phenomena is past the sell-by date?

If blogs have been monetized and now, when you attempt to search for useful information you get blog after blog made of SEO keywords and Adsense instead of information, it also indicates that things have moved on.

As usual, by the time the professionals have caught up with it the things that made a phenomena special and interesting have departed. "Today" making a viral video indicates that there's probably something much more interesting going on that we just haven't heard of yet.

I think that there are two issues.

Marketing departments talk about a video "going viral", meaning that they hope to create a video cheaply and then reach thousands or millions of viewers cheaply, because their content is so good.

Only it rarely is, so the same department than spends lots of money on media to achieve the same reach. It makes them seem cool, but instead of being a new (and cost-effective) way of reaching an audience, it's just an ad. A cool ad, but an ad nevertheless.

On the blog side, I feel a blog needs to be open, honest and prepared to be 2-way (via comments). Too many corporate blogs read like press releases. And a press release is a press release, no matter what you brand it.

FWIW, I think dot life is a blog, but not viral...

Most of the time, the term "viral advertising" is nothing more than marketing blurb. What they actually mean is just plain old "advertising'. More often than not there's nothing "viral" about it, regardless of what the advertising companies may claim.

Internet memes on the other hand, are what the rest of us would call "viral". Songs about Badgers, Mushrooms and Snakes, "over 9000", Rick Astley, lolcats, Chuck Norris "Facts", that sort of thing. These are what your Wikipedia quote is referring to. They spread across the internet on their own steam, not because they've been advertised left, right and center.

Try looking up "internet phenomena" on wikipedia for a long (but by no means complete) list of these. Note that there are only 3 advertisements on this pretty long list. These are, in fact, viral advertisements. That is, advertisements that actually went viral. Of course, these advertisements did extremely well. So marketing companies try to copy it... and... well... we're back at the start of my post now. Most "viral marketing" doesn't go viral, so it's really just marketing blurb. They can call it "viral marketing" all they want, that simply doesn't make it viral.

As for Blogs... well, it's "User generated content". So yeh, this pretty much IS a blog, they come in all shapes and sizes. Maybe you could claim a journalists blog isn't really a blog, more of an editorial... but then that's just semantics.

I'd take the Humpty Dumpty approach to what a term means: "'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'"

So by trying to analyse "viral" or "blog" you simply turn full circle and come back to what you took those terms to mean when you first encountered them.

Whatever happened to being able to look up a word in a dictionary for its meaning ??

If a word is not accurately defined in one's dictionary, then one should be using it, if clear communication is one's aim.

Of course, if bamboozling with jargon and acronyms is one's objective, well, anything goes..

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