A Lebanese
student at Harvard recently took great offense at the menu on offer at the
Harvard Business School canteen. The Station inadvertently labelled a series of
dishes from a variety of countries as an Israeli Mezze menu. She researched the
origin of the dishes, posted a picture of the menu on Facebook and wrote a
letter of protest with her cultural and political opinions on the matter,
tagging a bunch of her friends. When I read it, the post had generated 3,656
shares, 5,207 likes and nearly 300 comments. Harvard promptly took note, apologized
and stopped the menu. It is not widespread enough that you can find it on a highly reputable source yet but google it and you will track it down.
The
controversy that the post generated due to its politicized ramifications highlighted
the power of a simple Facebook post and its ability to mobilize people. Viral
videos, jokes or emails which have thousands, millions and hundreds of millions
of views have become a part of our lives as catchy as summer hit songs.
This all made
me ponder on the qualities that make something go viral. As any highly educated
MBA student would, I asked google who else had investigated the topic. One of
the more interesting takes on this comes from our MBA sidekicks down at NYU
Stern. An entertaining email (see articles below) that Professor Galloway at NYU
sent to a student in response to a complaint, and which he later proudly
distributed to his class, sparked 11 million views online. He subsequently used
it to conclude that the attributes which enable something to go viral are:
1.
Authenticity
(showing something raw and genuine and not getting in the way of voyeurism)
2.
Humor
(making it funny)
3.
Social
Debate (sparking controversy)
Full
articles and Professor Galloway’s analysis here:
And some random viral videos, fully
equipped with stats: http://viralvideochart.unrulymedia.com/all
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