Book Review: Unleashing the Ideavirus

In 2000, at the peak of the dot-com bubble, Seth Godin wrote Unleashing the Ideavirus, a self-described "manifesto" supposed to revolutionize marketing tactics in the Internet age. The thesis of the book is that ideas are the central commodity being traded now, and that, in order to be successful, ideas must be marketed by people, not at people. In the online idea market, Godin suggests, the consumer is also the producer. Rather than staring passively at the television, Consumer 2.0 is active and influential. Godin considers Amazon's user-rated review system and mentions the top-rated reviewer at the time, a retired librarian who had written 500 book reviews. The same person, Harriet Klausner, remains the top-rated Amazon reviewer today, now with over 15,000 reviews under her belt. The point is that the Web is made up of millions of Harriet Klausners, all willing to market your product or idea for you. The secret to success, according to the book, is allowing these "sneezers", as Godin calls them, to infect the rest of the world with your idea. This, of course, is not an entirely new concept, Godin admits. But writing in the late 90s, Godin was astute in measuring the impact of the Internet in the development of a new consumer identity. The book is an interesting trip back to when the Web first seemed new and exciting. It's funny to hear Godin discuss start-ups like "the Google.com search engine" (like what Bush uses) or referrals.com (didn't survive). With the Internet now entering a second phase of appearing new and exciting, Godin's advice may be more useful this time around:

...the future belongs to marketers who establish a foundation and process where interested people can market to each other. Ignite consumer networks and get out of the way and let them talk.

In the first phase, the Internet was new and exciting simply because it existed. But Web 2.0 is different. It's new and exciting because people have figured out how to be a real part of it. Web 1.0 was all about websites like Pets.com, where you were supposed to go and spend money. But that was all you could really do, and that's why sites like that failed. Sites like Amazon.com survived because visitors didn't just spend money but also contributed to the conversation and influenced sales. In Web 2.0, it's all about the active network. The larger and more active the network is, the more value the site has. This is why a free site like Facebook is the ultimate ideavirus. So what happens when the ultimate ideavirus sells its members down the river to big corporations by trying to make them all into little, corporate ideaviruses? Just today, Facebook announced a new advertising strategy:


Has Facebook not learned anything? The whole point of Web 2.0 is that we won't play this game anymore. Sure, Facebook may be a "foundation and process where people can market to each other", but they forgot to part about getting out of the way. Do they think they can skirt the rules of marketing 2.0 and exploit their network of users with artificial ideaviruses? This insults the core ideavirus that is Facebook. It works because people can communicate for free and link to each other just for the Hell of it. When a viral craze like Zombies sweeps through Facebook, it does so simply because it is pointless and fun. So because I have zombies on my page, they think I'm also going to spread the word about coca-cola's latest gimmick? It's not going to work, Facebook. I am canceling my account right now. How's that for an ideavirus?

Labels: Facebook ads, Ideavirus, Seth Godin, Web 2.0, web marketing

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