Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

by Derek Thompson

As we saw in the book’s first chapter, an individual broadcast is more powerful in an age with fewer channels of exposure. When there were only three television channels, for example, it was easier to get high ratings. But the future looks to be an age of abundance, with hundreds of channels, national media sites, podcasts, newsletters, Twitter profiles, Facebook pages, and media apps. Each of these media sources can reach thousands or millions of people a day. These publishers are broadcasters. Their work isn’t viral at all. To say that an idea “went viral” after it appeared on the New York Times front page is nearly as silly as saying a commercial “went viral” after appearing in the Super Bowl, or saying E. coli “goes viral” when many people get sick eating at the same restaurant. Words have meanings, and even the most elastic definition of virality has nothing to do with such one-to-one-thousand (or one-to-one-hundred-million) events. The spread of a viral video is not mostly viral, but neither is it all broadcast. Rather, the studies of social networks suggest that the majority of viral hits involves one or several mass contamination events that look like this . . . . . . where one Facebook post, one favorable spot on the Drudge Report, or one well-watched segment on Fox News reaches thousands and thousands of people instantaneously, and then a small fraction of that infected group passes it along again. Almost nothing really goes viral, but some ideas and products rea...