Comments on: What I’m reading: Viral Loop by Adam Penenberg

By: Andrew Chen

Andrew Chen — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:26:33 +0000

unfortunately there's not a lot out there – most of it can be gathered by searching for jargon terms like K-factor, viral coefficient, viral factor, viral loop, etc. There's been a couple in-depth talks about it, so make sure you do the searches on Slideshare also.

By: zipflash

zipflash — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:12:54 +0000

Since Penenberg remains high level, any reading recommendations (other than your blog and the links in this post) to get an overview of the current tools of the trade?

By: Ivan

Ivan — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:48:26 +0000

Nice work, Andrew. I am really interested in this book but I wonder when they are going to launch the kindle version lol

By: lifelover

lifelover — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:27:18 +0000

I just finished reading the book, good summary andrew.

One thing that needs to be discussed more in depth is the amorphous field of advertising, that seems to keep the entire internet afloat and "free", i think more time needs to be given to the discussion of this concept of "free", and how sustainable it is for future business models. Something you have (i give you credit for) acknowledging in previous articles is the crash of many web 2.0 hopefuls who have a advertising-reliant profit model and nothing more.

How sustainable are they? It seems these discussions are kept quite surface level, and never go into the understand of money itself, how it is created, and the condition of our current economic system. I have recently written an article about privacy in relation to "free" services, and am attempting to benchmark when the threshold point for users will be, when they will be willing to pay to keep some semblance of privacy. It seems, from what i have read, that to go viral, you need to be free first, then charge later. I don't necessarily agree with that model. Microsoft was never free, Bill Gates offered a unique, valuable product that people were willing to pay for, globally, and they did.

So much of the internet is reliant upon Google Adwords and Adsense program... its precarious.

Watch out for semantic web, things are going to get hairy. Just my 2 cents