In this issue

Viral Marketing

As readers of this column will know, I am very fond of Chinese Emperor stories.  There is a famous one about an Emperor who wanted to give his favourite a gift.  The favourite asked for a chessboard and said put a grain of rice on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, eight on the fourth and so on doubling each time.

It turns out that the amount of rice on the final square exceeds Chinese rice production for centuries (check the math on a hand calculator – you will exceed its capacity well before you get to square 64).  This type of sequence is called exponential. 

Now supposing I send an email to a friend, he forwards it on to two friends and each of them forwards it on to two friends.  The one mail will turn into two, two into four and so on doubling each time.  We are repeating the chess board story and literally within hours your mail will have gone to every in-box on the planet (or at least come to mine several times).

So this is viral marketing.   It is something that people

• think is so cool that they want to pass it on to their friends and
• can easily pass on to their friends.

Both components have to be there.  No matter how cool your item is people will not pass it on unless it is easy.  If done well it is:

• Free
• Very fast to spread
• More likely to be read because it comes from a friend to a friend.

So it is easy.  We create something witty and desirable – say a ‘shoot-up’ game programmed in Flash or an amusing screen-saver.  Send it out to a few friends and wait for the business to pour in. 

If it were that simple my mailbox would be clogged with flash games.

To achieve critical mass (atomic bombs work on the same principle) you need something quite exceptional. 

• A picture of a street-seller in Paris selling Olympic tee shirts at a discount went the rounds and I got at least three copies within hours of London winning the Olympic bid. It was kind of funny – if you were English anyway. 
• A video clip of an American commentator berating George Bush went round like wildfire recently.

These examples are accidental rather than designed.  However a commercial viral marketing campaign can work

• Burger King achieved success with the subservient chicken.  http://www.subservientchicken.com/  - there I just propagated it.  Notice the ‘tell a friend’ link on the Burger King page. This is an important factor – it has to be easy to pass it on.  The message here is ‘chicken the way you like it’.
• Many movies are promoted in this way, before AI (Artificial Intelligence) was launched; a number of web sites linked turned up and caused a stir.  Only when the movie was announced did the web sites begin to make complete sense. 
• This newsletter would work better as a viral marketing tool if I encouraged readers to get their friends to subscribe – so I have added a 'tell a friend' link. 

Most viral marketing campaigns fail because they are just plain not cool enough. You have to hit a spot that makes people want to pass it on rather than dump it in the trash.  A shoot-up game in Flash, or a screensaver just won’t hack it.  You need to have something new and fresh – be creative.

Technical tips – Wireless broadband is here – in Brentford anyway

Believing:

• That whenever radio and wires compete radio always wins in the end
• We should not swell BT's profits any more than we have to.

I have wireless broadband from NOW at home. This is broadband delivered by radio - not a wireless home network. In the home I just connect to the modem by a regular network cable.
I have a couple of personal reasons other than the above:

• I hope to use the modem as a backup for the office broadband if we get into problems.
• I can think of all sorts of uses for a broadband connection which I can stuff in my rucksack with my laptop.

First experience is good. The box arrived, plugged it in and started up the dialer software. Lo, we have lift-off.

The station servicing my cell was down Saturday night and Sunday morning which is not so good. The wait on the support line was long and the music on hold terrible - thank goodness I have a hands free phone. The operator was very helpful however. They have just set up in our area to I can forgive some teething problems.

Price is OK only - £14 per month for 512k. Easy to install and works fine

Now for the science bit..

NOW is not using the heavily hyped WiMax but use 3G mobile technology (specifically UMTS TDD).  Under the terms of the licence they have to disable the facility to pass a connection from one node to another so they can’t compete with the mobile phone companies.   (Why?)  However as far as I can see, there is nothing to stop me using it as a 3G mobile connection as long as I don’t move from cell to cell – or at least log in every time I move out of the range of a cell.  The cost differential with the mobile operators (who charge by the byte) could be very significant for a big user.  There seems to be no shortage of UMTS TDD products out there.

In fact I can use my current set-up as a mobile phone. It’s a tad Heath Robinson, however, as it involves a laptop, a PC headset, a mains-powered modem and a Skype account.  And I can’t use it on the move. But VOIP handsets are being developed which provide Voice Over IP via a broadband connection using UMTS TDD.   So with a VOIP provider account and a NOW broadband account I can do most things that a mobile can do for a fraction of the call costs.  This is all very tentative of course right now but watch this space.

News from the web

T-Mobile bringing in higher speed data on mobile phones.  HSDPA (how do they think these names up?) is a very high speed technology for mobiles that is faster than most broadband (1.8meg now ultimately 7.2meg).  If these 3G standards are confusing there is a tutorial here.

Vonage now has a million subscribers for its Internet phone service.

You can buy any keywords on Google and present your ad when someone types in that keyword.  So why not buy the name of your main business rival. When someone searches for then – your name pops up first.   Of course there was a law suit.  But settled out of court and so there is still no real legal decision on this. 

Bill Clinton was in the unenviable position of giving a speech in China as guest of Yahoo.  This was just days after Yahoo had given the Chinese Government the name of someone who used Yahoo to mail something the Chinese didn’t like.  The Chinese subsequently put the dissident in jail for 10 years.    Said Bill – sidestepping the issue: “In China, I think, that so far the political system and restraint on political speech in the Internet has not seemed to have any adverse commercial consequences. It will be interesting to see whether that is true of the future."

Meantime, the Chinese see Skype as a potential competitor to their local phone company.  So they have blocked it and will fine anyone who tries to get round the block.

In a further demonstration of China’s commitment to free speech and democracy it is announced that China wants only ‘healthy and civilized’ news on the web.  To enforce restrictions, authorities in Shanghai have installed surveillance cameras in cyber-cafes and require users to register with their ID card. 

In a surprise move, Vodafone said that there was no business case for blocking VOIP calls made from a phone handset (presumably using the 3G data connection).  Boy they must be making a lot of money from the data side of the business…

Opera is removing the ads from its free browser.  They hope to make money from web site referrals.  Opera is OK but I would stick to Firefox personally. 

Research in London indicates only 30% had heard of Blogging…  Hmm, I must do a newsletter about blogging – maybe next month.