The Key Factor For Viral Products

I love the part in the Facebook film where the product hits exponential growth a few hours after it was released:

Harvard at that time did not have a student directory with photos and basic information, and the initial site generated 450 visitors and 22,000 photo views in its first four hours online.

All of the features, designs and A/B testing in the world would not have achieved that level of adoption on their own.

To me, this growth shows that Facebook clearly met some quite fundamental human needs that had been unfulfilled on the web until that time. Perhaps the need for self promotion and some reinforcing of social status and groups by sharing a laugh at some of the early photos with your friends.

As features were added that gave people the ability to express themselves, form friendships and groups, and compare themselves with their peers, people continued to adopt the product extremely quickly all across the world and across cultures. Again, this was for quite human rather than technical reasons.

If you are looking for your product to spread or go viral, I believe that you need to appeal to people on a similarly primal level. Think about how your product can tap into people's low level needs, desires, fears and wants. If you make the user genuinely feel better or more successful after using the product, then they are much more likely to return and spread the word.

This theme comes up again in my note on developer hiring, where I argue that organisational context matters more than individual brilliance.