Over at Slate, Chris Wilson has a look at the spread of the 25 Random Things” meme on Facebook. [link via Slashdot] The meme (a meme is essentially an idea that spreads, taking on a life of its own), which simply asked users to write 25 things about themselves, and then tap 25 of their friends to do the same, seems to be dying down now (I would say thankfully), though the social media navel-gazing about it continues unabated.
Mr. Wilson notes that this particular version of the meme, with 25 things, is a continuation/mutation of previous variants (including 10, 16, 22 and any other numbers of things), and he goes on to track its spread using a pool of 3,000 people who responded to a survey about their participation in the meme.
Anyway, this quasi-epidemiological look at the spread of this meme is pretty interesting, but what does this meme really mean?
On the viral marketing side, Wilson suggests a strategy of throwing a bunch of stuff out into the wild and seeing what sticks. (Which is similar to Clive Thompson’s look last year at the practice of targeting influencers, Is the Tipping Point Toast?, which suggests that the best targetted marketing may actually be mass marketing.)
But even if something goes viral, what’s the benefit? In this particular case, Facebook probably saw an incremental increase in pageviews and ad impressions, as well as increased awareness of the Notes feature through which the meme spread. Possibly also increased engagement, though I would guess that people who participated in the meme were already pretty engaged and had lots of people they could choose to tag. That’s a positive for Facebook (if not a really big one), but what can other businesses take away from this?
Scenario: There’s a variant of the 25 Things meme floating around now on Facebook, only they’re not random things — they’re 25 questions about your senior year in high school. Again, it looks like an organic outgrowth of the 25 Things meme. But what would happen if someone — say, a Reunion.com or a Classmates.com, tried to tie in some marketing message to the meme? Assuming people aren’t already burned out on the 25 things concept, would people avoid it because it had an explicit marketing component tied to it?
I would have to say that it depends. People like free stuff, though there’s a huge difference between “one month free” and no-strings-attached free, like free taco/ice cream/breakfast offers that seem to spread pretty well online.
And even some strings are okay — Burger King has done a pretty good job of using viral thingies. Their most recent successful foray on Facebook was the now-defunct Whopper Sacrifice (ditch 10 friends for a free Whopper).
Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to say is that it all goes back to metrics — the success of a viral marketing campaign can’t be judged solely on its own terms, but in the context of driving something concrete — sales, leads, etc.
I don’t really have a closer on this, so I’ll just end on a question: What are your feelings on the 25 things phenomena? Is there something that businesses can take from this, or is it a one-off that only has lessons for people who are trying to sell you on viral marketing?
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