Fred Cavazza, a french consultant discussed this article from Fast Company about the book of Duncan Watts who made research on viral spreading.
The article can be found here, and bring a new light on viral mechanism
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/122/is-the-tipping-point-toast.html
A short summary in bad english
1/ Viral mechanism do not rely on key influencers for the spreading. It’s more chaotic and unpredictable that a hierchical vision of information spreading. His conclusion : Viral spreading are only due to random interactions between people.
2/ The author gives the fire forest metaphor : if all the conditions are gathered (humidity, sun, firemen time of response, the sort of wood, etc) a fire could be a catastrophy just with a single match. On the contrary, if the conditions are bad (if it rains, or if the wood is not dry enough), even fire bomb cannot help.
Conclusion : analysis of the context is key, muliplying the entry points for your campagne is critical to create a good beginning and having the chance to stand out.
As for Fred Cavazza, he underlines the fact that time is also a key factor : the faster you want to go, the higher the chance to fail will be. If the timing is good, and If the context and the conditions are there, success will be your.
As for me, I think that Influencers are also important. If they are not a guarantee of success, they act as echo chamber that speed up your campaign – they are some kind of entry point hard to avoid …
What is your opinion ? Any specialist of chaos theory ?
Pierre from Paris