1. IDEA WATCH
Vision Statement Sinan Aral is an assistant professor and Dylan Walker is a research
scientist at New York University’s Stern School of Business. This
research is drawn from a paper forthcoming in Management Science.
BLUE RED LIGHT BLUE GRAY
MAPPING ADOPTION OF INITIAL ADOPTER 2ND-TIER 3RD-TIER ADOPTER OTHER PEOPLE IN
ADOPTER (REFERRED BY ADOPTERS’ SOCIAL
ONE PRODUCT… (REFERRED BY AN A 2ND-TIER NETWORKS
INITIAL ADOPTER) ADOPTER)
…WHEN THE PRODUCT HAS …WHEN THE PRODUCT HAS
NO VIRAL FEATURES PASSIVE VIRAL FEATURES
Forget Viral Marketing—
Make the Product Itself Viral
Don’t spend your time saturating YouTube with VIRAL PRODUCTS ARE MORE EFFECTIVE
THAN TRADITIONAL MARKETING
goofy videos, hoping one of them will be the next
Simply adding a “Share” button to your product can
viral marketing sensation. Research we conducted increase peer-to-peer influence over product purchase
with the marketing analytics firm Social Amp proves by 400%. Viral product design has been shown to be
up to 10 times as effective at increasing adoption as
that you can engineer digital (and even physical) traditional banner ads and up to twice as effective as
products to increase peer-to-peer promotion. The
400
0
e-mail campaigns.
graphics above illustrate the explosive effect on
adoption among 2 million Facebook users when
viral features, such as user-generated personalized
invitations, were added to a software app for
sharing and discussing film-industry information.
by Sinan Aral and Dylan Walker HBR Reprint F1106Z
%
INCREASE IN
PEER-TO-PEER
INFLUENCE
34 Harvard Business Review June 2011

2. HBR.ORG
Viral Features
Passive Active
PROS PROS
Broader reach Personalized
to be more
More messages persuasive and
sent, and thus more effective
more adoption
Generates
Reaches more user
a more engagement,
heterogeneous longer use of
population the product,
and less churn
by adopters
CONS CONS
Less effective Narrower reach
per message
Fewer
Generates messages sent,
less user and thus less
engagement, adoption
shorter use of
the product, Reaches
and more a more
churn by homogeneous
adopters population
The social cost
of annoying
people
USE IT TO USE IT TO
Spread the Build a loyal
word about a customer base
product widely
Make a product
Generate sticky
adoption
quickly Increase user
engagement
…WHEN THE PRODUCT HAS
ACTIVE AND PASSIVE VIRAL FEATURES
THE VIRAL PRODUCT LANDSCAPE ACTIVE FEATURES ARE
ACTIVE
PERSONAL
MORE PERSUASIVE
% 2%
SOCIAL OFFERS
6
INVITATIONS
such as LivingSocial’s such as those
group couponing provided with Google
beta products
USER-GENERATED 6% INCREASE IN
NOTIFICATIONS ADOPTION PER
such as “Tweet” MESSAGE, VERSUS
and “Share” buttons 2% FOR PASSIVE
EMBEDDED
OFFERS PASSIVE FEATURES
such as free account GET THE MOST HITS
246
6%
sign-ups in e-mail
messages
AUTOMATED
AUTOMATED TARGETING
98%
PASSIVE
NOTIFICATIONS such as Amazon’s
such as iTunes Ping social product
and Google Buzz recommendations 246% INCREASE IN
TOTAL ADOPTION,
VERSUS 98% FOR
BROAD POPULATION SPECIFIC INDIVIDUALS ACTIVE
June 2011 Harvard Business Review 35