Jonah Peretti explains viral marketing
HuffingtonPost founder and “viral media marketing hotdog” Jonah Peretti spoke at the NY Viral Media Meetup last week.
Sure enough the slides from the talk have now gone viral. Here are the key takeaways, things you already knew but you just didn’t have the sense to condense into a short deck. One, viral content is spread through a network of bored office workers. Two, you never can tell what will go viral. And three, the web is ruled by crazy people.
He also dispensed valuable advice on how to present serious news on the Web, which he perfected at Huff Post. It’s something I’ll be trying to put into practice. Hint: it has to do with mullets.
Peretti’s presentation can be found in its entirety after the link.
Back in the pre-Internet era, the role of the bored office worker was played by brawling and swearing traders on Wall Street. They were in constant phone contact within a closed network of other traders; their eyes were focused on monitoring news feeds, and they liked good tasteless jokes. So a few hours after some event, usually a disaster, I started hearing about NSFW jokes from my financial friends.
Thanks to social networks, we’re now all part of one tribe or another, swapping tales and jokes around the virtual camp fire. According to Peretti, these 9-5 posses are great breeding grounds for viral media.
Jonah Peretti Viral Meetup Talk
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