(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 10^th 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:

(1)    Create something useful that people want to share with others: The viral coefficient will improve if sharing the information will make the sharer look better or improve their relationships with friends.  Also, if the product is simple, easy-to-understand, free and web-based the “barrier of entry” and “friction” will be reduced and the viral coefficient will generally increase.

(2)   Create a reason for people to share the message with others:  FamilyLink.com members want to invite more family members so that they can know about important happenings in the lives of these people.  Fans of a charity may be motivated to solicit their friends to donate to a charity about which they are passionate.

(3)   Make it easy for people to share the message with others. Viajamos.com.br allows members to easily invite friends from their email or easily post a cool piece of content to Twitter.  FamilyLink.com makes it easy to invite family members on Facebook, and also suggests other members to whom members may be related.

Here’s an article explaining how to calculate viral coefficients.

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.

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.  

Yesterday I read a blog entry about a Broadway musicals social network, BroadwaySpace.com.   Much of their success is credited to getting Broadway actors and other celebrities to join their social network.

The book Influencer contains the story of a PhD who took a job for a university trying to get local farmers to adopt new, more effective wheat seed.  The PhD was able to get one farmer to test the new seed.  That farmer had a bumper crop, however, the other farmers were still unwilling to use the new wheat seed.  The PhD had made the mistake of selecting a test farmer that was not trusted and actually hurt the wheat seed adoption instead of helping his efforts.

It is important that the first people to test a concept are “Influencers” who will give the concept credibility. It is very important that the first members of a social network are the right members.  If they are true “Influencers” they will serve as a large part of the catalyst for growth.

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.

This year, in addition to the pageant itself, the story of Christ was told through a special presentation of video, photography and music in the Visitor’s Center. This special presentation, Reflections of Christ, was created by talented artists, including my friend Jason Barney, who produced the music.

The presentation at the Visitors Center has touched many thousands of people who attended. However, this week Richard Miller showed me the website for the project. I was moved by a beautiful introduction with photography and music. Then, after I registered, I found 13 additional videos about the project in the “videos” section.

This website has only been online for a couple of months, but according to Quantcast it received more than 15,000 unique visits in March. This is a great example of the marketing concept that great sites don’t have to pay for advertising, they spread virally. ReflectionsofChrist.org would definitely fit in the “great sites” category.

This concept of trust derived from non-authoritative sources is an essential element in what is making the Internet successful. If you want to know which book is the best, would you trust the review of the book publisher, or the Amazon.com reviews from dozens of people who have read the book?

Richard Miller sent me the following quote about “anti-authorities” (or “non-authoritative sources”) from Made to Stick:

“A citizen of the modern world, constantly inundated with messages, learns to develop skepticism about the sources of those messages. Who’s behind these messages? Should I trust them? What do they have to gain if I believe them?

“A commercial claiming that a new shampoo makes your hair bouncier has less credibility than hearing your best friend rave about how a new shampoo made her own hair bouncier. Well, duh. The company wants to sell you shampoo. Your friend doesn’t, so she gets more trust points. The takeaway is that it can be the honesty and trustworthiness of our sources, not their status, that allows them to act as authorities. Sometimes antiauthorities are even better than authorities.” (Made to Stick, pp. 136-37, emphasis added)

In the Book of Mormon, a prophet named Alma was teaching the people in a new city. Alma was the authoritative source. However, the people did not believe him. A man named Amulek, who was well-known in that community, stood up and became a witness of the message Alma had shared. Amulek was the non-authoritative source, and with his added testimony the people believed the message of Alma (see Alma 10:4,10,12).

As with Amulek, members of the LDS Church can add their non-authoritative voices with even more credibility in certain situations than the Church itself. This is because co-workers, neighbors and friends will often trust their their friend more than the Church itself.

This same concept applies in most industries.  Hopeful adoptive parents, for example, would much rather get a referral to an adoption agency from someone who had a good adoption experience.   Businesses need to provide tools for their customers to share their non-authoritative voices (such as testimonials or blogs), and then feature this content in a visible way.

In doing this, though, the businesses need to be careful to show some less-flattering voices along with the good. If a company only shows the good reviews and responses, then the censorship will destroy the credibility.

Also, businesses need to do their best to fill industry-specific review sites with good information about their products. For example, a book author needs to have readers who liked her book to write reviews on Amazon.com and BN.com. A lawyer, dentist or doctor, might encourage customers who had favorable experiences to publish their reviews of those professional services on business review sites (InsiderPages.com, Yelp.com and others).