Monday, November 19, 2012

Going viral or How to change the menu at HBS


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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