This link has been bookmarked by 5 people . It was first bookmarked on 28 Jul 2006, by Eapen thomas.
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03 Mar 08
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20 Mar 07
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But the moment any of us connects to the Internet, we all connect to each other. And those connections make ideas travel. Fast.
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Word of Mouse Beats Word of Mouth
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Nathan Mhyrvold, former chief technology officer at Microsoft, says that a great employee is worth 1,000 times more than an average one. Why? Because of the quality of her ideas.
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To a greater or lesser degree, this effect applies to market share for automobiles, candy bars, soft drinks, software, and to the frequency of hits on Web pages. In other words, in almost every field of endeavor, being number 1 isn't just a little bit better than being number 2 or number 10 -- it's a whole lot better. Rewards are distributed unevenly, especially in our networked world. On the Internet, the magnification gets even greater, the stakes even higher.
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Busy people don't have time to look at every painting. They only have room in their overcrowded brains for a few paintings. And when you come right down to it, most people would like to see only the "celebrity" paintings. Just as there can be only one "My favorite famous actress" (Julia Roberts) and only one "This site equals the Internet" (Yahoo!), there's room for only one "Most famous painting in the world" -- and the safe choice is the Mona Lisa.
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Continue creating noteworthy online experiences to spread new viruses. Always begin by infecting your core audience of sneezers.
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Get permission from users to maintain an ongoing dialogue with them so that you can build a relationship that gives them a beneficial experience and gives you a profit stream.
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Achieve "lock-in" by making it more and more costly to switch from your service to someone else's.
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Have the idea behind your online experience go viral, bringing you a large chunk of the group that you're targeting without your having to spend a fortune advertising your new service.
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Create an online experience that offers your users something completely new, something they can't get offline. Or create an online experience that duplicates an offline experience, but does it so much faster, cheaper, and better that switching is worth the hassle.
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Ideavirus Tip #1: Concentrate!
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Whenever advertisers build their business around the strategy of talking directly to the customer, they become slaves to the math of interruption marketing.
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The goal of the marketer is to spend money buying ads that interrupt people who don't want to be bothered. The goal of the consumer is to avoid hearing from the advertiser whenever possible.
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But many other products, services, hit movies, or catchphrases are the intentional acts of smart entrepreneurs and politicians who know that launching and nurturing an ideavirus can help them accomplish their goals.
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It took about 20 years for radio to have 10 million users. By then, an industry had grown that could profit from the mass audience. It took about 10 years for TV to do the same thing. It took only 28 months for Netscape to get to 10 million users -- and Hotmail did it in 7 months. By aggregating a mass audience and by not having to share it with an entire industry, Internet heavyweights such as Hotmail and Netscape are able to realize huge profits, seemingly overnight. And they do it by spreading ideaviruses.
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Why does it matter that ideas can instantly cross international boundaries and change discussions about crime and justice, economics, education, or politics -- or even get us to buy something? Because the currency of our future is ideas, and the ideavirus is the way that those ideas propagate. And you don't have to wait for it to emerge organically or to hope that it happens accidentally. You can plan for it, optimize it, and make it happen.
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Ideaviruses are more important, easier to launch, and more potent than ever before. Ideaviruses are critical because they start fast and spread fast -- and speed wins: Brands and products don't have the time to develop the old way. Ideaviruses give us increasing returns: Word of mouth dies out, but ideaviruses keep growing and spreading. And finally, ideaviruses are the currency of the future, because we relish the new. An ideavirus is always about the new.
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Sometimes it seems as if everyone you know is watching the same TV show, reading the same book, or talking about the same movie, Web site, or TV commercial. How does this happen? It usually happens because an idea spreads on its own, not because a company behind a product spends a ton of money advertising it. How an idea spreads, and how to make it spread faster -- that's the idea behind an ideavirus.
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So, is an ideavirus a form of marketing? Absolutely! But today, what else is there? You don't win with better shipping, or better manufacturing, or better accounts payable. You win with better marketing, because marketing is about spreading ideas -- and ideas are now the very basis of competition.
The future belongs to the people who unleash ideaviruses.
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In the new economy, consumers have built up antibodies that resist traditional marketing. That's why we need to stop marketing at people, and start creating an environment where consumers can market to one another.
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An idea that just sits there is worthless. But an idea that moves, grows, and infects everyone it touches ... that's an ideavirus.
Exactly how does an ideavirus manifest itself? Where does it live? What does it look like? It starts with an idea manifesto, a powerful, logical "essay" that assembles a bunch of existing ideas and transforms them into a new, larger idea that's unified and compelling. Sometimes a manifesto is a written essay. Just as often it's an image, a song, a cool product, or a slick process. The medium doesn't matter; the message does. As long as you can use your manifesto to change the way that people think, talk, and act, you create value.
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Ideas are driving the economy, ideas are making people rich, and, most importantly, ideas are changing the world. So even though we're clueless about how best to organize the production of ideas, one thing is clear: If you can get people to accept, embrace, adore, and cherish your ideas, you win! You win financially, you gain power, and you change the world.
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Soybeans, Wal-Mart, and Ideaviruses
The first 100 years of our country's history were about who could build the biggest, most efficient farms. The second 100 years were about the race to build efficient factories. Welcome to the third century: This one's about ideas.
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03 Aug 06
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28 Jul 06
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