Promoting virality by making member to non-member connections
At True Ventures’ TrueU, Josh Elman talked about how Linkedin did an audit of each of their features, scoring each one 1 — 10 based on how much each feature allowed members to interact with non-members. This audit was used to prioritize projects that had a higher likelihood of increasing virality.
After Josh shared this process, I noticed a set of patterns within several popular products.
One-to-one sharing within a network
On many services, tagging is the easiest way to share a post or photo with someone else.
This example from Instragram shows that the content of many comments is just another person’s username.
A notification is sent to the tagged user which tell them to check out the photo or video.
This is an example of users creating their own method for communicating with each other. It’s “user-hacked” on top of the notifications Instragram automatically sends.
One-to-one sharing from members to non-members
On Wanelo, tagging friends is one of the primary ways to share a product. As you start typing, you can share with people who are already on Wanelo, or with your Facebook friends who aren’t.
When you select a Facebook friend, the product is shared on that person’s timeline. It’s so easy, I did it the first few times without even realizing what I was doing.
Pinterest does basically the same thing. And it seems to be effective enough that they've made it one of the primary actions on each pin.
User-generated member to non-member connections
Tinder, the ultra-hot mobile dating service, recently released a new feature called matchmaker.
It allows you to set-up your friends who may not know each other. It seamlessly allows members to connect with non-members.
The pool of people to match is populated by your Facebook friends.
Matching sends a Facebook message to each friend asking them to download the app. After they both download the app they are connected to chat.
Bringing the experience to non-members
These patterns allow users to spread a preview of the core experience of the app to non-members.
My guess it that the people introduced in this way to Pinterest, Wanelo and Tinder convert to sign ups at a higher rate than via generic invitations. It’s simple, contextual and direct.
Have you noticed any of these or other patterns that encourage virality? Leave a note if you have!
