Virality Coefficient 1+
That's key, because if the virality coefficient is 1, the start-up will grow, but at a linear rate, eventually topping out. Above 1, it achieves exponential growth. The table, created by Jeremy Liew, a venture capitalist with Lightspeed Venture Partners, an investor in RockYou, illustrates the difference a tiny increase in the viral coefficient can make, showing relative growth rates based on a viral coefficient of .6, .9, and 1.2. Liew started wtih a base of ten member and defined time as the period it takes for a member to invite others, which he estimated could be anywhere from two and eight weeks. Starting with 10 members and a viral coefficient of .6, you flatten out at 25 people, a gain of 15 users. At .9, you end up with 75 new members and growth slows dramatically. With a viral coefficient of 1.2, however, those same 10 people yield 1,271 additional users (see Table 1). Expressed in a line graph, a viral coefficient of 1.2 takes on the form of an exponential curve (Fig. 3).
-- Viral Loop: from Facebook to Twitter, How Today's Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves, Adam L. Penenberg, Hyperion, New York, 2009, p. 56
The Webster's Canon
The Webster’s Canon:
The key books about how to transform the world by using the Web:
- Rules for Radicals, by Saul Alinsky (pre Web, identical distributed power dynamic, indispensable)
- Free, by Chris Anderson;
- The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson;
- The Argument, by Matt Bai
- The Wealth of Networks, by Yochai Benkler
- The Websters' Dictionary, by Ralph Benko (The neutrality of this entry is disputed.)
- Crowdsourcing, by Jeff Howe
- Code v2, by Lawrence Lessig
- The Cluetrain Manifesto, by Levine, Locke, Searls and Weinberger
- Tribal Leadership, by Dave Logan (not Web, simply indispensable)
- Viral Loop, by Adama Penenberg
- Planet Google, by Randall Stross
- Everything is Miscellaneous, by David Weinberger
- Small Pieces Loosely Joined, by David Weinberger
- Burn Rate, by Michael Wolff
- The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, by Joe Trippi
- Taking on the System, by Markos Zuniga
Net(squared): what it takes
To summarize precisely what it takes:
Narrative (or counter-narrative)
Network (of your allies)
Exposure (via media)
Empirically-based program (not doctrinally-based)
Team (who will execute)
Technology (the easy part)
The Narrative is most important.
The Webster's Twelve Laws
How to Use the Web to Transform the World, by Ralph Benko
Visit the Websters' Bar & Grill by clicking on the tab in the navigation bar toward the very top of the homepage. It's a friendly place. Make yourself at home to learn the latest.
Here are the Webster's 12 Laws of how to use the Web to transform the world.
1. Pulitzer’s Law: "Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so that they will remember it, and above all accurately so they will be guided by its light."
The very best "mission statement" for the Web, composed an eon ago, still applies.
2. Nast’s Law and (Boss Tweed’s Complaint): "They can see pictures."
As Boss Tweed famously said, “Stop them damn pictures. I don’t care so much what the papers write about me. My constituents can’t read. But, damn it, they can see pictures.”
The Webster says: Use compelling graphics.
3. Clarke’s Second Law: "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."
4. Beecher’s Law: "No great advance has ever been made in science, politics, or religion, without controversy."
The Webster says: Controversy is golden – interesting, draws attention, drives traffic, and excites the community. But use common decency.
5. Lazarus’s Law: "Unleash the imprisoned lightning."
On the Statue of Liberty is engraved a sonnet by Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus.
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles….
photo credit: by Tengis, of replica statue near Ulaanbataar, Mongolia, hosted at Flikr.com
The Webster says: The Web can be our means of unleashing “the imprisoned lightning” of millions whose voices have been exiled and who deserve to be heard.
6. Metcalfe’s Law: "The value of a communication system grows at approximately the square of the number of nodes of the system."
source: A Complex Adaptive Intelligence Community: The Wiki and the Blog, by D. Calvin Andrus, Center for the Study of Intelligence vol 49. no. 3, CIA. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=755904
The Webster says: The more people we enroll and connect with one another, the more powerful we become.
7. Bianchini’s law of Viral Loops: "When your currency is ideas, people become emotionally attached."
"Chen calls a viral loop the 'most advanced direct-marketing strategy being developed in the world right now.' *** [I]f you create something people really want, need, or merely enjoy, then your customers will grow your business for you. Users, just by using a product, are, in essence, offering a testimonial 'When your currency is ideas, people become emotionally attached,' Ning's Bianchini says. 'Then you become a public utility like Blogger, YouTube, or Facebook.'" (Emphasis supplied.) Source: FastCompany.com
The Webster says: Offer something people really want, need or enjoy.
9. Trippi’s Law: If you pay attention to the community you’re building, then the community will step up and do the work."
12. Cage’s Law: "Begin anywhere."
The Webster says: It can appear daunting, the Webster knows. But just listen to John Cage, the greatest experimental composer of the 20th Century – and a profound philosopher – and begin. You will discover what you need as you go.
photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/extranoise/169187125/
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Brilliantly and with wit, Ralph Benko provides agitators and advocacy groups the way to get out our message and to "organize" in the Web 2.0 world. Couldn't be more timely -- or needed. --Steve Forbes, President and Chief Executive Officer of Forbes and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes magazine.
Spinning silica into worldwide webs of glass and light, the Internet has become a planetary community in need of a global guidebook. The Websters' Dictionary is it -- a cornucopian resource for all compendious world-warpers. -- George Gilder, author of Wealth and Poverty, Telecosm and Microcosm.
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