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Adam L. Penenberg
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Viral Loop Paperback – 19 Aug. 2010

by Adam Penenberg (Author)
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You read a book, you recommend it to a friend. That friend tells another friend. And another... until the book becomes this year's word-of-mouth sensation.

This is the first to analyze the power of the 'pass-it-on' phenomenon, introducing us to the architects of the mightily efficient, money-spinning model known as the Viral Loop - the secret behind some of the most successful businesses in recent history.

Outfits such as Google, eBay, Flickr and Facebook all employ the model at their core; all have seen their stock valuations skyrocket within years of forming. The genius lies in the model's reliance on replication: what's the point of using Facebook if none of your friends can see your profile, or using Flickr if you can't share your photos? Where's the joy in posting a video on YouTube if no one watches it? In creating a viral product that people want, need and desire, growth can, and will, take care of itself.

Find out why the Loop will catch us all up, sooner rather than later...

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  1. Print length
    288 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Sceptre
  4. Publication date
    19 Aug. 2010
  5. Dimensions
    12.8 x 2 x 19.8 cm
  6. ISBN-10
    0340918691
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0340918692
  8. See all details
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Product description

Review

One of the most astounding things about the Web age is how the best advertising is often no advertising at all. Penenberg masterfully explains how this works with case studies of products that were designed to spread. Every product can use a dose of this technique; this is the book to get to learn how. Recommended! ― Chris Anderson, bestselling author of The Long Tail and Free

In tight, engaging prose, Adam captures the essence of the ever-scaling power of the virus. It's not just for geeks any more. ― Seth Godin, author of Tribes

Penenberg has unlocked the secret to the most successful digital businesses. An indispensable read. ― Robert Safian, Editor-in-Chief, Fast Company

Adam Penenberg's lively book opens a window to all of our futures. ― Ken Auletta, author of Backstory

If you want to understand all things viral, this is the place to start. Penenberg's reporting gives us a ringside seat for some of the biggest viral success stories in history, from Tupperware to Ning. ― Dan Heath, co-author of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

Penenberg discovers the perpetual motion machine for business and marketing... Buy this book. Catch a virus. Make a fortune. ― Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do?

Instead of entrusting your business to a guru with an agenda and a ghostwriter, you should be turning to a pro journalist like Adam Penenberg, who understands the way media and money interact, has the critical faculty to engage with these phenomena in an unbiased fashion, and the technical facility to explain them to you in an entirely engaging, informative, and actionable way. ― Douglas Rushkoff, author of Media Virus and Life Inc.

An intriguing expose of a simple idea worth its weight in gold and then some. ― Cairns Post

Word of mouth is nothing new in terms of marketing a product... This is "the power of pass-it-on", according to Penenberg, who looks at how an old idea has been made new again by the likes of Facebook, MySpace and Hot or Not... Penenberg writes accessibly about this "paradigm-busting phenomenon" and makes it all sound so simple. ― The Sunday Mail Brisbane, and The Sunday Telegraph

Viral Loop tidily presents a history of viral case studies from analog to digital...This history of social networking benefits from in-depth first-person research. ― Courier Mail

Book Description

A ground-breaking, agenda-setting book that reveals the business model that has propelled the likes of YouTube, Google, Facebook and MySpace to global success.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sceptre (19 Aug. 2010)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0340918691
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0340918692
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.8 x 2 x 19.8 cm
  • Customer reviews:

About the author

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Adam L. Penenberg

Adam L. Penenberg

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Adam L. Penenberg is a journalism professor at New York University who has written for Fast Company, Forbes, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Wired, Slate, Playboy, and the Economist. A former senior editor at Forbes and a reporter for Forbes.com, Penenberg garnered national attention in 1998 for unmasking serial fabricator Stephen Glass of the New Republic. Penenberg's story was a watershed for online investigative journalism and portrayed in the film Shattered Glass (Steve Zahn plays Penenberg).

Penenberg has published several books that have been optioned for film and serialized in the New York Times Magazine, Wired UK, and the Financial Times, and won a Deadline Club Award for feature reporting for his Fast Company story "Revenge of the Nerds," which looked at the future of movie-making. He has appeared on NBC's The Today Show as well as on CNN and all the major news networks, and has been quoted about media and technology in the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, Wired News, Ad Age, Marketwatch, Politico, and many others.

Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
191 global ratings

Top reviews from United Kingdom

customer
5.0 out of 5 stars A worthwhile read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 September 2012
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This book is really interesting and well worth a read - I had the previous addition and wanted the updated version. The item was delivered on time.
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Johnny Loz
4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 January 2013
Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )
This is much more than a book on how viral marketing works on the internet. It's prety much a history behind the web's most popular websites. From Hot or Not to Facebook, Hotmail to MySpace it tells how penniless geeks became millionaires in an incredibly short space of time. There's a bit of science on how the whole viral pass it on system works, but I was more interested in how these ideas were formed and then sold on for crazy amounts of money. Since the book was written smart phone apps and Twitter have taken over the world and made the the power of pass it on pretty much atomic.
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S. Diment
3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but of limited practical use
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 October 2011
Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )
Viral loop is a book about word-of-mouth marketing, largely on the internet. It's well-written, with some interesting stories about the development of facebook, hotmail, ebay and other big internet names, as well as anecdotes about similar businesses that failed to take off.

It's hard to work out why some businesses do work and others don't. Whilst this book offers lots of examples that might provide some insights, and is quite inspiring for anyone trying to get their own big internet idea off the ground, I would say its of limited use to most small businesses that aren't necessarily aiming to be global internet giants one day. But if you are starting an internet business, you may find this an interesting read, if a bit limited on the practical side.
2 people found this helpful
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Richard Stowey
5.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 August 2010
Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )
I found this book very interesting. As a digital project manager I am working with the internet quite a lot and it is rare that there is a book which interests me enough on the subject of IT.

I found this book highly intriguing, especially on the subject of viral loops and how many of the early projects of the internet were started and took off. Especially interesting was the boom of Hotmail!

I would recommend this one to anyone who has a partial interest in the early history of the internet and how many of the biggest sites, like Hotmail and Craig's List started and started booming! Pretty easy to read and get sucked into too!
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G.C.
5.0 out of 5 stars The web of people easily explained
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 March 2010
Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )
Adam Penenberg is an academic who writes about the media and how we interact with it. In Viral Loop he provides anecdotes and tries to use these to help us understand why some things becomes so violently popular online. Penenberg's book is well researched and easy to read, without being too lightweight in nature. Whilst it won't tell social media mavens out there anything they don't really know it is a good guide to the modern phenomena of web businesses for the rest of us.
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N. A. Fryars
4.0 out of 5 stars Well-researched and very readable book on positive feedback and marketing
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 February 2012
This is a well-researched and very readable book on the power of positive feedback loops in marketing. It contains many useful examples. Most, but not all, of them are internet-related.

Minor grouse: the author doesn't really understand the difference between positive and negative feedback (p12).
One person found this helpful
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Denis Poisson
5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating look into systems that work
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 July 2010
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I didn't think I would be as interested as I turned out to be in the topic, but Penenberg's conversational style kept me interested all the way through. Turns pout this is a fascinating journey through the history of 'pass-it-on' business systems, the kind that you put effort into kicking off and then sit back and watch as you watch the result spread without any further imput required. I read this as a natural follow up to 'rich dad poor dad' where the reader is encouraged to set up such automatic money-spinners in order to reach financial oals with a maximum short-term effort and a maximum long-term reward.

On-line viral (self-spreading) success stories such as Facebook are covered, but not before looking at their predecessors such as 'Hot or Not' and it's instant explosion of successand how that success was very nearly its downfall: success without the infrastructure to cope with demand can be fatal. Penenberg takes us all the way back to the very first such business-models, with the likes of Tupperware, all the while dropping anecdotes that kept me not just intriegued, but fully entertained.

Overall, the book works very well, the topic is covered by a writer at the height of his skill. Maybe it's a niche topic, but it's covered in a very public-friendly way. Highly recommended.
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Arynth
3.0 out of 5 stars Well written, but flawed
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 March 2011
Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )
This book gets it right in so many areas. It's well written and well-researched. It has some great case studies. What does it get wrong? I feel that it flubbs the very definition of 'viral' in the digital age, instead reducing it to anything that is spread via word of mouth (WOM).

I think a new definition of what Viral is is required. It is not merely WOM discussions about brands, although it can inspire that. It is a concept - video, image, sound or phrase - that spreads, becomes more popular and is often constantly changing. What I would like to have seen are modern examples of how brands can start that within branded and non-branded situations. How social networks launch 'virals' without any branding influence. What impact this has on advertising models. I wanted to hear about what initially gets something going and how it starts and is informed by memes (shared symbols created and modified by internet users which often spread offline).

So perhaps the title is misleading. Perhaps it should have been called "The Power of Pass-it-on: Word-of-mouth Marketing in the Modern Age".

It's an interesting work, but not as useful in understanding the digital world as it could have and should have been.
One person found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Jai Chavan
4.0 out of 5 stars Slow, but stunning.
Reviewed in India on 8 February 2020
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Viral Loop is a must read for young growth hackers who wish to understand more about growth, network effects, point of non-displacement, and ultimate saturation where growth dies. You wanna do growth hacking? Learn what has worked so far in the vitality loops. 😉
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Paolo Martines
5.0 out of 5 stars Ottimo volume
Reviewed in Italy on 21 March 2019
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Questo libro analizza le leve e le regole alle quali bisogna sottostare per rendere un contenuto virale. Must read!
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my nicebox
5.0 out of 5 stars Sehr empfehlenswert
Reviewed in Germany on 26 April 2017
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guter Content...interessante Sichtweisen / Ansätze...kann ich weiterempfehlen

Vielleicht irgendwann auf Deutsch erhältlich. Schließt leider Interessierte aus, die Englisch nicht beherrschen.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on 8 August 2016
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Good book.
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Billy
5.0 out of 5 stars 10+ Stars!! Read this book before you make your next move in biz!!
Reviewed in the United States on 28 April 2011
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Wow!!! How I wish I read this book all the years that I've been struggling with Internet biz. If you are serious about making it in today's biz, whether online or offline, read this book! If you don't read this book, you are simply, deliberately and ignorantly stepping aside for those who read it to amass all the fortune they can. The author is not only knowledgeable, but is able to present his content in a way that literally takes you by the hand and insightfully shows you the major strategic Ins and Outs you need to arm yourself with as you embark on taking your business dreams to success. I give this book more than 10 stars, with sincere gratitude to the author for such a detailed outline of what has come before, how it happened, and how we could use this immense background as a spring-board to ultimate success.
One person found this helpful
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