Viral Coefficients – the essential metric for fast-growing social media properties

A viral coefficient is the number of new community members, on average, that each community member brings to the community.  A viral coefficient of 1 means that each member will bring 1 additional member to the community.  One of the secrets to quickly grow social media properties  is to maintain a viral coefficient greater than 1.  Here are some examples of member growth rates at different viral coefficients:

(1)    Viral Coefficient of 0.5 – If a community has 100 members and a viral coefficient of 0.5, then those 100 members will bring 50 new members to the site.  Those 50 members will bring 25 members, and so on, and the community will ultimately plateau at about 200 members (after 10 periods of time). A social network with a viral coefficient less than 1 will stop growing on its own.

(2)   Viral Coefficient of 1 – If a community has 100 members and a viral coefficient of 1, then those 100 members will bring 100 new members to the site, and those members will bring another 100 members to the site.  This will result in linear growth from 100 to 200 to 300 until the community has reached 1,000 members in the same 10 periods of time as the first example.

(3)   Viral Coefficient of 2 – If a community has 100 members and a viral coefficient of 2, then those 100 members will bring 200 members, who will bring 400 members, who will bring 800 members, etc.  By the 10th period of time, this social network will have 51,200 members.  Having a viral coefficient is like compound interest for social networking.

Fast-growing social media sites, such as Twitter, sometimes forgo advertising during their growth stage in order to maximize their viral coefficient and accelerate their exponential growth. Here are a couple of core principles to improve and maintain strong viral coefficients:

Read more…

Lessons in Survival from the Boabab Tree

photo (2)Last week in the Disney Animal Kingdom, our safari guide taught us about the gigantic Boabab tree. One Boabab tree can hold as much as 4.5 thousand liters of water.  This tree is often called the “Upside-down Tree” because when it’s leaves fall the branches look like roots and and the tree appears to be upside down.  This tree is found most commonly  in belts throughout Africa.

These trees have enormous, trunks and live for thousands of years.  One Boabab tree has a trunk with a diameter of more than 25 meters, and was dated to have been living at the time of Noah’s flood (source).

These trees teach about how businesses, countries and families can survive hard economic times.   Read more…

Viajamos.com.br – the Brazilian Travel Social Network

On Tuesday, January 26th we launched Viajamos.com.br, a Brazilian travel social network.  We created this site for Azul, a Brazilian airline.

The site was launched at Campus Party, a huge technology event in Sao Paulo 11 days ago.  Since that time, we have seen exciting viral growth.  Within the last hour, the 30,000th person registered to be a member of Viajamos.com.br.

Members are also actively engaged with the site.  For example, 63,000 photos have already been uploaded to the site, nearly 1,600 topical user groups have been created, 1,500 blog entries have been posted,  500 events have been added to the site, etc.

How Things Can Be Perfectly Right When They Went All Wrong

About 14 years ago I tried to start a photoBrazilian adoption program.  I worked to help a U.S. couple adopt a little baby boy.  In the end, the adoption could not be completed because of Brazilian adoption policies.

Sonia and Everaldo,  dear friends in Brazil, adopted the baby boy and named him Miguel. The Brazilian adoption program closed.

A few weeks ago I visited Sonia, Everaldo and their family in Aracaju, Brazil.  I spent a delightful time with Miguel, now 14, who is pictured above with his adoptive mother.

Miguel wants to be a chef and open his own restaurant some day. I’m teaching him how to make Mexican food because there are no Mexican food restaurants in his city.

Everyone loves Miguel.  He has a huge heart.  Miguel has a great family who loves him.  Sonia told me how grateful she is that the U.S. adoption of Miguel fell apart. At the time the Brazilian adoption program fell apart it was a huge set back for me, but the next year Adoption.com was created.  Much more importantly,  Miguel was adopted by the right family, and is exactly where he’s supposed to be.  I’m so grateful that things went wrong with the Brazilian adoption program, but turned out perfectly right.

I need to remember this important lesson to help me keep perspective when other things go wrong in my life.06

Starting a Social Network with Key Influencers

A few months ago I built GenealogyWise.com for one of my clients.  GenealogyWise is a social network for people interested in researching and sharing their genealogy or family history.  In just a few months, this social network already has 3,000+ member-created groups on genealogy topics, 14,000+ registered members and large amounts of user-generated content.

One of the keys to successful launch of this social network was that a list of “key influencers” in the genealogy sector was developed.  Then, we reach out to those key influencers when GenealogyWise was in beta and invited them to be the first members of the social network.  Not only did many of those key influencers join, but they also invited their friends, posted on their blogs, and told others about it on other genealogy communities.   Read more…

Consulting for Social Media, Niche Social Networks & Digital Monetization

“Approximately once a decade, a radical new technology emerges that fundamentally changes the business landscape.  In every case, regardless of prior competitive dynamics, businesses that understand and appropriately adopt the technology win, while those that fail to do so lose.  In the 1970s, this was mainframe computing.  IN the 1980s, it was the PC. In the 1990s, it was the Internet.  And today it is the online social graph.” (Clara Shih in The Facebook Era)

The social graph is the world wide web of people.  It is the map of everyone on the Internet and how they are interconnected.  The social graph is for people what the Internet is for interconnected webpages.  Social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace are helping to construct this social graph.

Each of these radical technology evolutions has been punctuated by a cycle of innovation, commercialization, emergence of new applications, and then large-scale impact on business.  The online social graph is following this cycle, and is facilitating a “new, more nimble, and more efficient class of businesses that outcompetes those using technology from the previous era.” (Clara Shih) Read more…

FamilyLink Becomes a Top 100 US Web Property

For years, one of my goals has been to help create one of the 100 most popular web properties. Since last August I have been privileged to spend much of my consulting time working for a client named FamilyLink, the world’s largest family-related social network.  FamilyLink operates the We’re Related Facebook application, which is the 6th most popular Facebook app.  Through this application, it’s iPhone application, its ad network, its websites and other projects, FamilyLink helps to connect families. FamilyLink has only been around for a couple of years, but already has more than 40 million registered members and delivers hundreds of millions of ad impressions per month.

Today FamilyLink became the #99 most popular US web property, according to Quantcast:
http://www.quantcast.com/p-86YkM5oSeBMSE#summary

Congratulations FamilyLink for your phenominal growth.  Thank you for letting me part of this amazing ride.

Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations

I was recently meeting with Scott Lazerson, the President of Interface Foundation, an amazing organization that helps connect celebrities with great causes.

In the meeting Scott shared with the the Millennium Development Goals that were established by 187 nations during the United Nations Convention of 2000.  The goals are as follows:

  • Eradicate extreme poverty & hunger
  • Achieve universal primary education
  • Promote gender equality & empower women
  • Reduce child mortality
  • Improve maternal health
  • Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria & other diseases
  • Ensure environmental sustainability
  • Develop a global partnership for development

Even though these goals have been in existence for about 9 years, I have never heard of them.  However, I am passionate about these goals and hope to do my little part to achieve them with social media.

Spiritual Abuse

Spiritual abuse occurs when we mistreat another person in the name of God, faith or religion. David Johnson & Jeff VanVonderen, in their book “The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse”, describe spiritual abuse:

“It’s possible to become so determined to defend a spiritual place of authority, a doctrine or a way of doing things that you wound and abuse anyone who questions, or disagrees, or doesn’t ‘behave’ spiritually the way you want them to. When your words and actions tear down another, or attack or weaken a person’s standing as a Christian [or standing in any faith]– to gratify you, your position or your beliefs while at the same time weakening or harming another – that is spiritual abuse.”

Characteristics of Spiritual Abuse

According to the “Spiritual Abuse” article from Wikipedia, Spiritual abuse can include:

  • Psychological and emotional abuse
  • Any act by deeds or words that demean, humiliate or shame the natural worth and dignity of a person as a human being
  • Submission to spiritual authority without any right to disagree; intimidation
  • Unreasonable control of a person’s basic right to make a choice on spiritual matters
  • False accusation and repeated criticism by negatively labeling a person as disobedient, rebellious, lacking faith, demonized, apostate, enemy of the church or God
  • Prevention from practicing faith
  • Isolation or separation from family and friends due to religious affiliation
  • Physical abuse that includes physical injury, deprivation of sustenance, and sexual abuse
  • Exclusivity; dismissal of an outsider’s criticism and labeling an outsider as of the devil
  • Withholding information and giving of information only to a selected few
  • Conformity to a dangerous or unnatural religious view and practice
  • Hostility that includes shunning (relational aggression, parental alienation) and persecution

Read more…

Momentum and Hope

duningsmallLast weekend Crystal and I went sand duning with our friends Matt and Michelle at the Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park  in southern Utah. The park is comprised of 3,730 acres of breathtaking pink coral-colored dunes, surrounded by red sandstone cliffs, blue skies, and deep emerald forests. Imagine pink sand dunes and lush pine trees.  At first glance it feels like an oxymoron of nature.

This picture shows the four of us in Matt and Michelle’s Sand Rail. This vehicle took the dunes with power and speed and had enough momentum to do whatever the driver wanted to do on the dunes.  (We wore helmets and had 5-point restraint systems in addition to roll bars.)

Later in the day, Matt and I took quads out and Matt taught me the concept of dune “bowling”.  Some of the large sand dunes were shaped as crescents or partial “bowls”.  In sand dune bowling, the quad rider builds up momentum then climbs straight up one side of the sand dune.  As the rider nears the top, and before momentum is lost, the rider turns to one side, and rides along the inside ridge of the sand dune bowl.  However, bowling only works if the rider keeps momentum.  If momentum is lost, the rider must quickly turn the quad down the sand dune to regain momentum. If momentum is not regained, the rider and the quad may tumble down a steep sand dune. Read more…