Inherently Viral vs. Word Of Mouth

It can almost be intoxicating when calculating the huge possibilities social networks offer for customer acquisition. With easy access via API's and social plugins (e.g. Facebook Social Graph) makes the whole thing seem like walk in the limelight. We've all heard it and we've all seen it: People love to share. And now I will add the magic and most abused word in the industry: viral. Things will go viral, you lean back and let the social network do your customer acquisition.

Since social networks per se are inherently viral concept ( i.e. to make the service useful to a user, itself becomes part of the user acquisition process), it's fairly easy to misinterpret and confuse word of mouth from inherently viral concept, especially when using social networks as a platform for customer acquisition. Together with social networks, Skype is another great example of inherently viral services, there's no benefit having free call service without having any friends to call to. Just like it's no fun poking yourself on Facebook either, right? (Yes, poking was 2008).

Instagram, a photo sharing service, is a great example of a compelling service benefitting from powerful word of mouth while leveraging its inbuilt sharing features, but it's not inherently viral service. One can take and share beautiful pictures without having any friends using the service. But, having others follow and interact with ones pictures in the service adds user value.

Great products that create added user value go viral, whether they are inherently viral or not. Trying to leverage social networks inherently viral nature to compensate lack of added user value or the concept of being inherently viral itself, is like trying to ride the Big Wave. Very few can.

My First Meeting With BranchOut

BranchOut, career networking service on Facebook, is determined to disrupt recruiting industry, where the classic resume is dying and will "no longer going to be your own version of your work history; it will also include a data-driven third party’s assessment".

At SXSW,  BranchOut founder Rick Marini emphasized the importance of constantly recruiting by mining social graphs, and while that is a viable approach, it's also the trickiest one, since one is constantly bursting into people's living rooms, interrupting their private conversations. "Customers are not on social networks to "join your community." They're their to network with friends, family, and peers".

During the Christmas holidays I suddenly couldn't access my Facebook Wall, it just kept crashing. Not a huge crisis per se, merely thinking Facebook had ran into uptime issues due the holiday season with people starving to socialize. Not quite so. It appeared to be all the BranchOut requests posted to my Wall making it crash. Those of you who use Facebook via iPhone are also familiar with the frustration of not being able to delete posts on your Wall. At the time it was also unclear whether users were aware of posting invitations to their entire network. How 2008, I thought.

According to latest statistics, BranchOut has grown its user base with over 100% past month, now reaching 500K users. It had taken 7 months to acquire the first approx. 225K users. I can understand if it might have gotten a bit frustrated about the slow user acquisition pace after promising start and press coverage, at the same time Instagram becoming an instant hit scoring 1 Million users, only 10 weeks after its launch. Not to mention all Quora frenziness. After all, just one look at the impressive team and advisor pages, combined with the power of social networks and clear business model solving the problem of future recruiting, makes BranchOut look nothing but a clear homerun.

I can't say for sure if BranchOut got anxious and geared up the push feature, but it sure went viral. Although, not just quite as planned...

Max Niederhofer of Qwerly

Mike Butcher of TechCrunch Europe

Robin Wauters of TechCrunch

BranchOut has since then modified its approach from simple Facebook Wall invitations to Wall messages from my friends having answered questions about me, making it a bit more personal, although quite frankly, not less spammy.

Lessons Learned

• Don't make me hate you, before I even get a chance to know you. On social networks, it's about pull, not push. Enchant me. 
• Be patient, don't get caught up on neither feature wars nor become anxious when other new services around you show traction and start banking users. If you believe in your product, work towards that vision. If I don't care about you, it's because it doesn't bring enough value. 
• Make use cases, find influential users, true fans, and success stories. Wouldn't it have been awesome and made a great use case if BranchOut latest hire Chris Merritt, new vice president of sales and general manager of enterprise products, had been recruited with help of BranchOut? 
• On social networks, "me" in WIIFM (what's in it for me) accounts for friends. My credibility towards my network comes first. 

Lookup.to Helps You Find New Interesting People. Together.

Lookup.to is a new Swedish startup by serial entrepreneur Ted Valentin to explore the world of interesting people. Pretty similar idea that SkillPages has, differentiating itself from BranchOut by not being just about creating a professional network using ones social graph, but more about tagging people with their special interests and skills to find new interesting connections.

It too leverages Facebook's social graph at the moment, only using a bit more flattering form of invitation method with explicit appreciation and golden frames to harness new users. Anyone in ones social graph can add tags to your profile, having user profiles consisting only of tags. Lookup.to also highlights, or rather looks up to, contributors to a specific tag by listing them on the site. The name is pretty savvy, as associated with encouraging natural human behaviour -  to return a compliment. It's been trying to demonstrate added user value by creating lists of e.g. female entrepreneurs, hot topic nowadays. Far better approach than just another service to pat each other's back. 

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