Jacob Morgan on Social Media, Technology, Marketing, and Life - Latest Comments in What Does “Viral Content” Mean?

Re: What Does “Viral Content” Mean?

Jed — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 02:53:42 -0000

Nonetheless, you should ask someone from your old company to figure out their IP address and send it to you so you can monitor who is hitting your site.

They can do this by visiting:
http://www.ipchicken.com/

Re: What Does “Viral Content” Mean?

Jacob Morgan — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 05:45:06 -0000

hi jed,

i'm not too concerned. i have nothing against my old company nor do i have anything against you or barry. as far as i am concerned i value your readership (and barry's) either way. the more people i interact with the better, i like it all.

Re: What Does “Viral Content” Mean?

Jed — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 05:35:40 -0000

I'm definitely not "Barry" and if you're telling me I have the same IP address as "Barry" then that freaks me out, but it sounds like the send form you have also sent the "from" value as Barry and had content from me (Jed).

Frankly, if I wanted to post two messages, I'd just to it as Jed. As you can see, I am fairly direct.

Regardless, here is how you can prove to yourself that I am not from your old company.

I did a traceroute to your site:

1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 2.362 ms 1.521 ms 1.766 ms
2 73.121.88.1 (73.121.88.1) 8.331 ms 7.862 ms 7.951 ms
3 ge-1-6-ur02.sffolsom.ca.sfba.comcast.net (68.85.217.29) 8.068 ms 7.814 ms 8.902 ms
4 te-8-1-ur01.sfpine.ca.sfba.comcast.net (68.87.192.210) 7.040 ms 8.671 ms *
5 te-9-3-ur02.sfpine.ca.sfba.comcast.net (68.87.192.241) 7.313 ms 13.368 ms *
6 te0-7-0-1-ar01.oakland.ca.sfba.comcast.net (68.86.90.142) 9.428 ms 8.218 ms 8.046 ms
etc.

I live in South Beach using a comcast line.

You mentioned your old company uses Deru - who is in Arizona (Whois).

I suggest you ask someone at your old company (who you trust to get this info from) to do a traceroute so you can test this out. You can probably just look at the first two hops (the router is usually the give away).

Re: What Does “Viral Content” Mean?

Jacob Morgan — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 04:07:53 -0000

oh and a very special thank to Jose Nunez for his technical skills, I suppose having a phd pays off :)

Re: What Does “Viral Content” Mean?

Jacob Morgan — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 04:03:07 -0000

hi barry,

so i was a little curious about something so i did a little bit of checking. it turns out that you and jed have the same ip addresses (98.210.153.68). then it turns out that in gmail i get an email saying i have a comment from Jed and from Bary, yet when I open then email that says its from Bary, the messages in gmail says "Jed to me." Then I was still curious since the rather harsh/impolite comments came when mentioning an example from a previous position I once held. So I decided to cross check the C-classes for proximity against my old company website. It turns out that jed/barry are using GE-6-1-ur01.sffolsom.ca.sfba.comcast.net. My old company uses phoenix8-gw.deru.net and is located on Folsom street in San Francisco, but the interesting thing is that the ip addres then resolves to an ip address that is very very close by to the one that Barry/Jed is using.

So I'm thinking that Jed = Barry and that jed/barry is most likely someone from my old company...or this can all be just some big coincidence

either way thanks for reading, it's flattering :)

Re: What Does “Viral Content” Mean?

Jed — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 01:49:37 -0000

Maybe you should edit that initial description then to state the video WOULD be viral, but not "biral" so that people aren't confused by your mistake? That way the comments will not focus on the mistake, but rather your biral concept.

Re: What Does “Viral Content” Mean?

Jacob Morgan — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:56:16 -0000

@jed
the benefits of having a blog such as this one is that I do get to express my opinion, therefore with all due respect, I have the right to express my opinions. Viral can mean several things just as social media can mean several things.

Also, you are correct, according to the definition I wrote in the post for "viral" the video you mentioned would be considered "viral" I should be a bit more careful when writing :) but thanks to comments like yours I can correct my mistakes

haha very well all content about you is now "miral"

@barry
i think the numa numa video is viral but not "biral.' What weezer did was take several viral videos and turn them into one "biral" video.

thanks for your comments and thanks for reading

Re: What Does “Viral Content” Mean?

Jed — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:36:38 -0000

And while we're at it, I hereby claim "miral" to be all viral videos about me.

Re: What Does “Viral Content” Mean?

Barry — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:31:10 -0000

So... only something that promotes a brand can be viral? Then why is the Numa Numa video viral if some other video that got a lot of views isn't?

Re: What Does “Viral Content” Mean?

Jed — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 06:16:11 -0000

If a video gets 450k views on YouTube, then it is viral.

The definitions you project are yours alone. Viral means...viral. It spread like a virus. It got 450k views.

If the business you mentioned claimed that they were creating a viral video about THEIR business, then, yes, I guess they failed.

But you never said they made that claim. And I don't see how you have the right to say what is and what is not viral for pieces that spread....virally.

Re: What Does “Viral Content” Mean?

Jacob Morgan — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:49:59 -0000

hi Vinay,

You make some great points, thanks for sharing your point of view. I'm always amazed as to the different types of videos I see floating around the net. I think the recent weezer video is my favorite one as of late.

thanks for taking the time to comment, and thanks for reading!

Re: What Does “Viral Content” Mean?

Vinay — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:23:09 -0000

Very Interesting article Jacob.. been following your write ups for late and I should I love reading them. Commenting on the point.. I go with what you say .. to me viral marketing/viral content means a campaign that uses word-by-mouth or something you would wanna share with your friends.. this directly/in-directly does promote the brand.

The ability to promote such contents among people by highly utilizing the social network for its high speed reach (something like high speed virus infection!?) would be the viral marketing.

Have a look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v31qxrXsxv0 (Why every guy should buy their girlfriend Wii Fit?) !! Less than a week old and already 10 Millions+ video views.. this is a perfect example of viral content I would say.. it gives enough exposure for the brand/product! You can see the number of people who have dugg at Digg : http://digg.com/nintendo/Why_every_guy_should_b... which has crossed 10k+ in less than a week!!

Going further, it seems like a internet marketing agency were behind making this video... while it looks like a normal user wanted to share in public.. the reality though is business oriented. It really looks like the marketing group were hired by Nintendo do this viral video and the team has done something simple and yet made it impressive!

And an example for user generated viral content.. i don't have much to show now.. but this would make some sense, have a look at http://www.rahulsood.com/2008/05/ugh-it-was-my-... !! Rahul got MacBook Air from his friends and he used it to cut the cake.. the MacBook air has already made enough noise but againg adding more to it is this viral content.. while the author doesn't do it purposefully, it can be classified as Viral!

The result..? TechCrunch made a mention about it at their site and soon it had a good round around the internet!

And Yeap.. there is difference between user generated viral content (which is always a passion-towards-brand or interest) and which turns out to be a viral content & business viral content .. is easiest way to have a good reach among every growing social networkers!

I hope I tried to give my point of view..!

Cheers,
Vinay