Author: escapebusinesssolutions

Upgrading to Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010

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Business continuity management for Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010

Posted on by escapebusinesssolutions in Uncategorized

  1. The Visual Studio assemblies for the Activities are stored in the global assembly catalog (GAC).
  2. The XML definition files (.ACTIONS files) are stored in the 14\TEMPLATE\{LCID}\Workflow directory.
  3. An XML entry to mark the activity as an authorized type is stored in the Web.config file for the Web applications in which it is used.

    If your farm workflows use custom actions, you should use a file backup system to protect these files and XML entries. Similar to SharePoint Foundation features such as Web parts and event receivers, these files should be reapplied to the farm as needed after recovery.

  • Workflows that depend on custom code, such as those that are created by using Visual Studio, are stored in two locations. The Visual Studio assemblies for the workflow are stored in the global assembly catalog (GAC), and the XML definition files are stored in the Features directory. This is the same as other types of SharePoint Foundation features such as Web parts and event receivers. If the workflow was installed as part of a solution package, backing up the content database protects these workflows.
  • If you create a custom workflow that interacts with a site collection other than the one where the workflow is deployed, you must back up both site collections to protect the workflow. This includes workflows that write to a history list or other custom list in another site collection. Performing a farm backup is sufficient to back up all site collections in the farm and all workflows that are associated with them.
  • Workflows that are not yet deployed must be backed up and restored separately like any other data file. When you are developing a new workflow but have not yet deployed it to the SharePoint Foundation farm, make sure that you back up the folder where you store your workflow project files by using Windows Backup or another file system backup application.

 

Protecting service applications

Service applications in a SharePoint Foundation environment can be made up of both service settings and one or more databases, or just service settings. You cannot restore a complete service application by restoring the database only; however, you can restore the databases for a service application and then reprovision the service application. For more information, see Restore a service application (SharePoint Foundation 2010).

 

Protecting SQL Server Reporting Services databases

SharePoint Foundation backup and recovery does not include SQL Server Reporting Services databases. You must use SQL Server tools. For more information, see Backup and Restore Operations for a Reporting Services Installation (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=186642).

  1. Back up or export the object from the unattached content database.
  2. Restore or import the output of the prior step into SharePoint Foundation 2010.

The following items can be backed up or exported from an unattached database by using granular backup and export, and then restored:

  • Site collection

    Back up by using site collection backup, and then recover by using a site collection restore.

  • Site

    Export, and then import.

  • Lists and libraries

    Export, and then import.

 

You can use import to recover content that you backed up from a database configured to use the SQL FILESTREAM RBS provider. The recovered content will be stored by SharePoint Foundation 2010 using the currently defined storage provider for that content database — that is, if the content database is not set to use RBS, the data will be stored in the content database; if the content database is set to use RBS, the data will be stored in RBS.

  • Related content

     

     

     

     

  • Plan for availability (SharePoint Foundation 2010)

    Updated: June 17, 2010

    This article describes key decisions in choosing availability strategies for a Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 environment.

    As you carefully review your availability requirements, be aware that the higher the level of availability and the more systems that you protect, the more complex and costly your availability solution is likely to be.

    Not all solutions in an organization are likely to require the same level of availability. You can offer different levels of availability for different sites, different services, or different farms.

    In this article:

  • Availability overview

    Availability is the degree to which a SharePoint Foundation environment is perceived by users to be available. An available system is a system that is resilient — that is, incidents that affect service occur infrequently, and timely and effective action is taken when they do occur.

    Availability is part of business continuity management (BCM), and is related to backup and recovery and disaster recovery. For more information about these related processes, see Plan for backup and recovery (SharePoint Foundation 2010) and Plan for disaster recovery (SharePoint Foundation 2010).

     


    Note:

    When calculating availability, most organizations specifically exempt or add hours for planned maintenance activities.

     

    One of the most common measures of availability is percentage of uptime expressed as number of nines — that is, the percentage of time that a given system is active and working. For example, a system with a 99.999 uptime percentage is said to have five nines of availability.

     

     

    The following table correlates uptime percentage with calendar time equivalents.

     

    Acceptable uptime percentage

    Downtime per day

    Downtime per month

    Downtime per year

    95

    72.00 minutes

    36 hours

    18.26 days

    99 (two nines)

    14.40 minutes

    7 hours

    3.65 days

    99.9 (three nines)

    86.40 seconds

    43 minutes

    8.77 hours

    99.99 (four nines)

    8.64 seconds

    4 minutes

    52.60 minutes

    99.999 (five nines)

    0.86 seconds

    26 seconds

    5.26 minutes

     

    If you can make an educated guess about the number of total hours downtime you are likely to have per year, you can use the following formulas to calculate the uptime percentage for a year, a month, or a week:

    % uptime/year = 100 – (8760 – number of total hours downtime per year)/8760

    % uptime/month = 100 – ((24 × number of days in the month) – number of total hours downtime in that calendar month)/(24 × number of days in the month)

    % uptime/week = 100 – (168 – number of total hours downtime in that week)/168

     

    Costs of availability

    Availability is one of the more expensive requirements for a system. The higher the level of availability and the more systems that you protect, the more complex and costly an availability solution is likely to be. When you invest in availability, costs include the following:

    • Additional hardware and software, which can increase the complexity of interactions among software applications and settings.
    • Additional operational complexity.

     

    The costs of improving availability should be evaluated in conjunction with your business needs — not all solutions in an organization are likely to require the same level of availability. You can offer different levels of availability for different sites, different services, or different farms.

     

    Availability is a key area in which information technology (IT) groups offer service level agreements (SLAs) to set expectations with customer groups. Many IT organizations offer various SLAs that are associated with different chargeback levels.

     

     

     

    Determining availability requirements

    To gauge your organization’s tolerance of downtime for a site, service, or farm, answer the following questions:

    • If the site, service, or farm becomes unavailable, will employees be unable to perform their expected job responsibilities?
    • If the site, service, or farm becomes unavailable, will business and customer transactions be stopped, leading to loss of business and customers?

    If you answered yes to either of these questions, you should invest in an availability solution.

  • Choosing an availability strategy and level

    You can choose among many approaches to improve availability in a SharePoint Foundation environment, including the following:

    • Improve the fault tolerance of server hardware components.
    • Increase the redundancy of server roles within a farm.

     

    Hardware component fault tolerance

    Hardware component fault tolerance is the redundancy of hardware components and infrastructure systems such as power supplies at the server level. When planning for hardware component fault tolerance, consider the following:

    • Complete redundancy of every component within a server may be impossible or impractical. Use additional servers for additional redundancy.
    • Ensure that servers have multiple power supplies connected to different power sources for maximum redundancy.

    In any system, we recommend that you work with hardware vendors to obtain fault-tolerant hardware that is appropriate for the system, including redundant array of independent disks (RAID) arrays.

     

    Redundancy within a farm

    SharePoint Foundation 2010 supports running server roles on redundant computers (that is, scaling out) within a farm to increase capacity and to provide basic availability.

    The capacity that you require determines both the number of servers and the size of the servers in a farm. After you have met your base capacity requirements, you may want to add more servers to increase overall availability. The following illustration shows how you can provide redundancy for each server role.

     

     

     

     

     

    Availability within a server farm

     

     

     

     

     

    The following table describes the server roles in a SharePoint Foundation 2010 environment and the redundancy strategies that can be used for each within a farm.

     

    Server role

    Preferred redundancy strategy within a farm

    Front-end Web server

    Deploy multiple front-end Web servers within a farm, and use Network Load Balancing (NLB).

    Application server

    Deploy multiple application servers within a farm.

    Database server

    Deploy database servers by using clustering or high-availability database mirroring.

     

    Database availability strategies

    You can use Microsoft SQL Server failover clustering or SQL Server high-availability database mirroring to support availability of databases in a SharePoint Foundation environment.

     

    SQL Server failover clustering

    Failover clustering can provide availability support for an instance of SQL Server. A failover cluster is a combination of one or more nodes or servers, and two or more shared disks. A failover cluster instance appears as a single computer, but has functionality that provides failover from one node to another if the current node becomes unavailable. SharePoint Foundation can run on any combination of active and passive nodes in a cluster that is supported by SQL Server.

    SharePoint Foundation references the cluster as a whole; therefore, failover is automatic and seamless from the perspective of SharePoint Foundation.

    For detailed information about failover clustering, see Getting Started with SQL Server 2008 Failover Clustering (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=102837&clcid=0x409) and Configure availability by using SQL Server clustering (SharePoint Foundation 2010).

     

    SQL Server high-availability mirroring

    Database mirroring is a SQL Server technology that can deliver database redundancy on a per-database basis. In database mirroring, transactions are sent directly from a principal database and server to a mirror database and server when the transaction log buffer of the principal database is written to disk. This technique can keep the mirror database almost up to date with the principal database. SQL Server Enterprise Edition provides additional functionality that improves database mirroring performance.

    For mirroring within a SharePoint Foundation farm, you must use high-availability mirroring, also known as high-safety mode with automatic failover. High-availability database mirroring involves three server instances: a principal, a mirror, and a witness. The witness server enables SQL Server to automatically fail over from the principal server to the mirror server. Failover from the principal database to the mirror database typically takes several seconds.

    A change from previous versions is that SharePoint Foundation is mirroring-aware. After you have configured a database mirror instance of SQL Server, you then use SharePoint Central Administration or Windows PowerShell cmdlets to identify the failover (mirror) database server location for a configuration database, content database, or service application database. Setting a failover database location adds a parameter to the connection string that SharePoint Foundation uses to connect to SQL Server. In the event of a SQL Server time-out event, the following occurs:

  1. The witness server that is configured for SQL Server mirroring automatically swaps the roles of the primary and mirror databases.
  2. SharePoint Foundation automatically attempts to contact the server that is specified as the failover database.

For information about how to configure database mirroring, see Configure availability by using SQL Server database mirroring (SharePoint Foundation 2010).

For general information about database mirroring, see Database Mirroring (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=180597).

 


Note:

Databases that have been configured to use the SQL Server FILESTREAM remote BLOB store provider cannot be mirrored.

 

Comparison of database availability strategies for a single farm: SQL Server failover clustering vs. SQL Server high-availability mirroring

The following table compares failover clustering to synchronous SQL Server high-availability mirroring.


 

SQL Server failover clustering

SQL Server high-availability mirroring

Time to failover

Cluster member takes over immediately upon failure.

Mirror takes over immediately upon failure.

Transactional consistency?

Yes

Yes

Transactional concurrency?

Yes

Yes

Time to recovery

Shorter time to recovery (milliseconds)

Slightly longer time to recovery (milliseconds).

Steps required for failover?

Failure is automatically detected by database nodes; SharePoint Foundation 2010 references the cluster so that failover is seamless and automatic.

Failure is automatically detected by the database; SharePoint Foundation 2010 is aware of the mirror location, if it has been configured correctly, so that failover is automatic.

Protection against failed storage?

Does not protect against failed storage, because storage is shared between nodes in the cluster.

Protects against failed storage because both the principal and mirror database servers write to local disks.

Storage types supported

Shared storage (more expensive).

Can use less-expensive direct-attached storage (DAS).

Location requirements

Members of the cluster must be on the same subnet.

Principal, mirror, and witness servers must be on the same LAN (up to 1 millisecond latency roundtrip).

Recovery model

SQL Server full recovery model recommended. You can use the SQL Server simple recovery model, but the only available recovery point if the cluster is lost will be the last full backup.

Requires SQL Server full recovery model.

Performance overhead

Some decrease in performance may occur while a failover is occurring.

High-availability mirroring introduces transactional latency because it is synchronous. It also requires additional memory and processor overhead.

Operational burden

Set up and maintained at the server level.

The operational burden is larger than clustering. Must be set up and maintained for all databases. Reconfiguring after failover is manual.

 

Service application redundancy strategies

The redundancy strategy you follow for protecting service applications that run in a farm varies, depending on where the service application stores data.

 

Service applications that store data in databases

To help protect service applications that store data in databases, you must follow these steps:

  1. Install the service on multiple application servers to provide redundancy within the environment.
  1. Configure SQL Server clustering or mirroring to protect the data.

The following service applications store data in databases:

  • Business Data Connectivity service application
  • Application Registry service application

    We do not recommend mirroring the Application Registry database, because it is only used when upgrading Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Business Data Catolog information to SharePoint Foundation 2010.

  • Usage and Health Data Collection service application


Note:

We recommend that you do not mirror the Usage and Health Data Collection service application Logging database.
  • Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Subscription Settings service
  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.
  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.
  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
  5. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt, type the following command:

Backup-SPFarm -Directory <BackupFolder> -BackupMethod {Full | Differential} [-Verbose]

Where <BackUpFolder> is the path of a folder on the local computer or the network in which you want to store the backups.


Note:

If you are backing up the farm for the first time, you must use the Full

option. You must perform a full backup before you can perform a differential backup.

For more information, see Backup-SPFarm (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/c37704b5-5361-4090-a84d-fcdd17bbe345(Office.14).aspx).

 


Note:

We recommend that you use Windows PowerShell when performing command-line administrative tasks. The Stsadm command-line tool has been deprecated, but is included to support compatibility with previous product versions.

 

  • Use Central Administration to back up a farm

    You can use Central Administration to back up the farm.

    To back up a farm by using Central Administration

  1. To perform this procedure, you must be a member of the Farm Administrators group on the computer that is running Central Administration.
  2. In Central Administration, on the Home page, in the Backup and Restore section, click Perform a backup.
  3. On the Perform a Backup — Step 1 of 2: Select Component to Back Up page, select the farm from the list of components, and then click Next.
  4. On the Start Backup — Step 2 of 2: Select Backup Options page, in the Backup Type section, select either Full or Differential.


Note:

If you are backing up the farm for the first time, you must use the Full option. You must perform a full backup before you can perform a differential backup.
  1. In the Back Up Only Configuration Settings section, click Back up content and configuration settings.
  2. In the Backup File Location section, type the UNC path of the backup folder, and then click Start Backup.
  3. You can view the general status of all backup jobs at the top of the Backup and Restore Status page in the Readiness section. You can view the status for the current backup job in the lower part of the page in the Backup section. The status page updates every 30 seconds automatically. You can manually update the status details by clicking Refresh. Backup and recovery are Timer service jobs. Therefore, it may take several seconds for the backup to start.

    If you receive any errors, you can review them in the Failure Message column of the Backup and Restore Job Status page. You can also find more details in the Spbackup.log file at the UNC path that you specified in step 6.

  • Use SQL Server tools to back up a farm

    If you want to back up the complete farm, you must use either Windows PowerShell or Central Administration. You cannot back up the complete farm by using the SQL Server tools because you cannot use the tools to back up the farm’s configuration. However, you can back up all the databases that are associated with the farm.

     

    To back up the databases associated with a farm by using SQL Server tools

  1. To use SQL Server tools to back up SharePoint Foundation 2010 databases, the account that is used to back up the databases must be a member of the SQL Server db_backupoperator fixed database role on the database server where each database is stored.
  2. Open SQL Server Management Studio and connect to the database server.
  3. In Object Explorer, expand Databases.
  4. Right-click the database that you want to back up, point to Tasks, and then click Back Up.
  5. In the Back Up Database dialog box, in the Source area, select the kind of backup that you want to perform from the Backup type list. For more information about which backup type to use, see Overview of Recovery Models (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=114396).
  6. In the Backup component area, click Database.
  7. Either use the default name provided or specify a name for the backup set in the Name text box.
  8. Specify the expiration date for the backup set. This date determines how long, or when, the backup set can be overwritten by any later backups that have the same name. By default, the backup set is set to never expire (0 days).
  9. In the Destination area, specify where you want to store the backup.
  10. Click OK to back up the database.
  11. Repeat steps 1-10 for each farm database.
  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.
  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.
  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
  5. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt (that is, PS C:\>), type the following command, and then press ENTER:

Backup-SPConfigurationDatabase -Directory <BackupFolder> -DatabaseServer <DatabaseServerName> -DatabaseName <DatabaseName> -DatabaseCredentials <WindowsPowerShellCredentialObject> [-Verbose]

Where:

  • <BackupFolder> is the path to the folder with the correct backup files.
  • <DatabaseServerName> is the name of the database server for the farm that you are backing up.
  • <DatabaseName> is the name of the farm configuration database.
  • If you are not logged on with an account with db_backupoperator fixed database role on the database server where the configuration database is stored, you must specify the value for DatabaseCredentials

    parameter.

 

For more information, see Backup-SPConfigurationDatabase (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/28ddc176-1b7f-47dd-868f-39b7c403a900(Office.14).aspx).

 


Note:

We recommend that you use Windows PowerShell when performing command-line administrative tasks. The Stsadm command-line tool has been deprecated, but is included to support compatibility with previous product versions.

 

  • Use Central Administration to back up a farm configuration

    You can use Central Administration to back up the configuration of the farm that Central Administration is running on. To back up the configuration of a remote farm, you must use the Central Administration Web site that is running on the remote farm. You cannot use Central Administration to back up an unattached configuration database.

     

    To back up a farm configuration by using Central Administration

  1. Verify that the user account performing this procedure is a member of the Farm Administrators group.
  2. On the Central Administration Home page, in the Backup and Restore section, click Perform a backup.
  3. On the Perform a Backup — Step 1 of 2: Select Component to Back Up page, select the farm from the list of components, and then click Next.


Note:

You can back up the configuration for any service or application. However, common practice is to back up configuration at the farm level.
  1. On the Start Backup — Step 2 of 2: Select Backup Options page, in the Backup Type section, select Full.
  2. In the Backup Only Configuration Settings section, select the Backup only configuration settings option.
  3. In the Backup File Location section, type the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path of the backup folder, and then click Start Backup.
  4. You can view the general status of all backup jobs at the top of the Backup and Restore Job Status page in the Readiness section. You can view the status for the current backup job in the lower part of the page in the Backup section. The status page updates every 30 seconds automatically. You can manually refresh the status details by clicking Refresh. Backup and recovery are Timer service jobs. Therefore, it may take several seconds for the backup to start.

If you receive any errors, you can review them in the Failure Message column of the Backup and Restore Job Status page. You can also find more details in the Spbackup.log file at the UNC path that you specified in step 5.

  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin. Additionally, the user account performing this procedure must be a member of the SQL Server db_backupoperator fixed database role on the database server where each database is stored.
  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.
  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
  5. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt (that is, PS C:\>), type the following command, and then press ENTER:

Backup-SPFarm -Directory <BackupFolder> -BackupMethod {Full | Differential} -Item <WebApplicationName> [-Verbose]

Where:

  • <BackupFolder> is the path of the folder you use for storing backup files.
  • <WebApplicationName> is the name of the Web application.


Note:

If you are backing up the Web application for the first time, you must use the Full

option. You must perform a full backup before you can perform a differential backup.

 

For more information, see Backup-SPFarm (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/c37704b5-5361-4090-a84d-fcdd17bbe345(Office.14).aspx).

 


Note:

We recommend that you use Windows PowerShell when performing command-line administrative tasks. The Stsadm command-line tool has been deprecated, but is included to support compatibility with previous product versions.

 

  1. Verify that the user account that is performing this procedure is a member of the Farm Administrators group.
  2. In Central Administration, on the Home page, in the Backup and Restore section, click Perform a backup.
  3. On the Perform a Backup — Step 1 of 2: Select Component to Back Up page, select the Web application from the list of components, and then click Next.


Note:

The Web application might consist of several components. You must select the top-level component.
  1. On the Start Backup — Step 2 of 2: Select Backup Options page, in the Backup Type section, select either Full or Differential.


Note:

If you are backing up the Web application for the first time, you must use the Full option. You must perform a full backup before you can perform a differential backup.
  1. In the Back Up Only Configuration Settings section, click Back up content and configuration settings.
  2. In the Backup File Location section, type the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path of the backup folder, and then click Start Backup.
  3. You can view the general status of all backup jobs at the top of the Backup and Restore Job Status page in the Readiness section. You can view the status for the current backup job in the lower part of the page in the Backup section. The status page updates every 30 seconds automatically. You can manually update the status details by clicking Refresh. Backup and recovery are Timer service jobs. Therefore, it may take several seconds for the backup to start.

    If you receive any errors, you can review them in the Failure Message column of the Backup and Restore Job Status page. You can also find more details in the Spbackup.log file at the UNC path that you specified in step 6.

  1. Verify that the user account that is used to back up the databases is a member of the SQL Server db_backupoperator fixed database role on the database server where each database is stored. Additionally, verify that the user account has Full Control permissions on the backup folder.
  2. Open SQL Server Management Studio and connect to the database server.
  3. In Object Explorer, expand Databases.
  4. Right-click the database that you want to back up, point to Tasks, and then click Back Up.
  5. In the Back Up Database dialog box, in the Source area, select the kind of backup that you want to perform from the Backup type list. For more information about which backup type to use, see Overview of Recovery Models (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=114396).
  6. In the Backup component area, click Database.
  7. Either use the default name provided or specify a name for the backup set in the Name text box.
  8. Specify the expiration date for the backup set. This date determines how long, or when, the backup set can be overwritten by any later backups that have the same name. By default, the backup set is set to never expire (0 days).
  9. In the Destination area, specify where you want to store the backup.
  10. Click OK to back up the database.
  11. Repeat steps 1-10 for each database that is associated with the Web application.
  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.
  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.
  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
  5. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt, type the following command:

    Backup-SPFarm -Directory <BackupFolder> -BackupMethod {Full | Differential} -Item <ServiceApplicationName> [-Verbose]

     

    Where:

  • <BackupFolder> is the path of a folder on the local computer or on the network in which you want to store the backups.
  • <ServiceApplicationName> is the name of the service application that you want to back up.


Note:

To back up all the service applications, at the Windows PowerShell command prompt, type the following command:

Backup-SPFarm -Directory <BackupFolder> -BackupMethod {Full | Differential} -Item “Farm\Shared Service Applications” [-Verbose]


Note:

If you are backing up the service application for the first time, you must use the Full

option. You must perform a full backup before you can perform a differential backup.

Some service applications always require a full backup. For these service applications, even if you select the Differential

option, the system performs a full backup.

 

For more information, see Backup-SPFarm (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/c37704b5-5361-4090-a84d-fcdd17bbe345(Office.14).aspx).

 


Note:

We recommend that you use Windows PowerShell when performing command-line administrative tasks. The Stsadm command-line tool has been deprecated, but is included to support compatibility with previous product versions.

  • Use Central Administration to back up a service application

    You can use Central Administration to back up a service application.

     

    To back up a service application by using Central Administration

  1. Verify that the user account that performs this procedure is a member of the Farm Administrators group.
  2. In Central Administration, on the Home page, in the Backup and Restore section, click Perform a backup.
  3. On the Perform a Backup — Step 1 of 2: Select Component to Back Up page, select the service application from the list of components, and then click Next. To back up all the service applications, select the Shared Service Applications node.


Note:

The service application might consist of several components. You must select the top-level component.
  1. On the Start Backup — Step 2 of 2: Select Backup Options page, in the Backup Type section, select either Full or Differential.


Note:

If you are backing up the service application for the first time, you must use the Full option. You must perform a full backup before you can perform a differential backup.

Some service applications always require a full backup. For these service applications, the system performs a full backup even if you select the Differential option.
  1. In the Backup File Location section, in the Backup location box, type the path of the backup folder, and then click Start Backup.
  2. You can view the general status of all backup jobs at the top of the Backup and Restore Job Status page in the Readiness section. You can view the status for the current backup job in the lower part of the page in the Backup section. The status page updates every 30 seconds automatically. You can manually update the status details by clicking Refresh. Backup and recovery are Timer service jobs. Therefore, it may take several seconds for the backup to start.

    If you receive any errors, you can review them in the Failure Message column of the Backup and Restore Job Status page. You can also find more details in the Spbackup.log file at the UNC path that you specified in step 5.

  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.
  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.
  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
  5. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt type the following command:

    Backup-SPSite -Identity <Site collection name> -Path <backup file> [-Force] [-NoSiteLock] [-UseSqlSnapshot] [-Verbose]

    If you want to overwrite a previously used backup file, use the Force

    parameter. You can use the NoSiteLock

    parameter to keep the read-only lock from being set on the site collection while it is being backed up. However, using this parameter can allow users to change the site collection while it is being backed up and might lead to possible data corruption during backup.

    If the database server is running an Enterprise Edition of Microsoft SQL Server, we recommend that you also use the UseSqlSnapshot

    parameter for more consistent backups. You can also export sites or lists from these snapshots.


Important:

When you perform a backup that uses the UseSqlSnapshot

parameter, a backup will be completed successfully. However, you will see an error similar to the following:

Backup-SPSite : Operation is not valid due to the current state of the object.

At line:1 char:14

+ Backup-SPSite <<<< http://site -Path + CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Backup-SPSite], InvalidOperationException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.InvalidOperationException,Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell.SPCmdletBackupSite\\yourpath


Note:

If the RBS provider that you are using does not support snapshots, you cannot use snapshots for content deployment or backup. For example, the SQL FILESTREAM provider does not support snapshots.

For more information about using SQL snapshots, see Back up databases to snapshots (SharePoint Foundation 2010).

For more information, see Backup-SPSite (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/d4c31a1a-82a7-425f-b1bb-22e70bedd338(Office.14).aspx).


Note:

We recommend that you use Windows PowerShell when performing command-line administrative tasks. The Stsadm command-line tool has been deprecated, but is included to support compatibility with previous product versions.

 

  • Use Central Administration to back up a site collection

    You can use Central Administration to back up a site collection.

    To back up a site collection by using Central Administration

  1. Verify that the user account performing this procedure is a member of the Farm Administrators group. Additionally, verify that the Windows SharePoint Services Timer V4 service has Full Control permissions on the backup folder.
  2. In Central Administration, on the Home page, in the Backup and Restore section, click Perform a site collection backup.
  3. On the Site collection backup page, select the site collection from the Site Collection list.
  4. Type the local path of the backup file in the Filename box.


Note:

If you want to reuse a file, select the Overwrite existing file check box.
  1. Click Start Backup.
  2. You can view the general status of all backup jobs at the top of the Granular Backup Job Status page in the Readiness section. You can view the status for the current backup job in the lower part of the page in the Site Collection Backup section. The status page updates every 30 seconds automatically. You can manually update the status details by clicking Refresh. Backup and recovery are Timer service jobs. Therefore, it may take several seconds for the backup to start.

    If you receive any errors, you can review them in the Failure Message column of the Granular Backup Job Status page.

  1. Verify that the user account that is performing this procedure is a member of the Farm Administrators group.
  2. In Central Administration, on the Home page, in the Backup and Restore section, click Perform a backup.
  3. On the Perform a Backup — Step 1 of 2: Select Component to Back Up page, select Solutions, and then click Next.

    You can also select an individual solution, if you only want to back up a single solution.

  4. On the Start Backup — Step 2 of 2: Select Backup Options page, in the Backup Type section, select either Full or Differential.


Note:

If you are backing up the solution for the first time, you must use the Full option. You must perform a full backup before you can perform a differential backup.
  1. In the Backup File Location section, type the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path of the backup folder, and then click Start Backup.
  2. You can view the general status of all backup jobs at the top of the Backup and Restore Job Status page in the Readiness section. You can view the status of the current backup job in the lower part of the page in the Backup section. The status page updates every 30 seconds automatically. You can manually update the status details by clicking Refresh. Backup and recovery are Timer service jobs. Therefore, it may take several seconds for the backup to start.

    If you receive any errors, review the Failure Message column of the Backup and Restore Job Status page. You can also find more details in the Spbackup.log file at the UNC path that you specified in step 4.

 

To back up trusted solutions by using Windows PowerShell

  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.
  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.
  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
  5. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt, type the following command to back up all of the solutions in the farm. To back up a single solution, add the name of the solution to the item path “farm\solutions”.

Backup-SPFarm -backupmethod full -directory <UNC location> -item “farm\solutions”

Where:

  • <UNC location> is UNC location of the directory that you want to back up to.

For more information, see Backup-SPFarm (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/c37704b5-5361-4090-a84d-fcdd17bbe345(Office.14).aspx).

 


Note:

We recommend that you use Windows PowerShell when performing command-line administrative tasks. The Stsadm command-line tool has been deprecated, but is included to support compatibility with previous product versions.

 

 

Backing up sandboxed solutions

You cannot back up only sandboxed solutions. Instead, you must back up the farm, Web application, or content database with which the sandboxed solution is associated. For more information about these methods of backing up, see Related content.

  1. The Visual Studio 2010 assemblies for the actions are stored in the global assembly cache (GAC).
  2. The XML definition files (.ACTIONS files) are stored in the 14\TEMPLATE\<LCID>\Workflow directory.
  3. An XML entry to mark the action as an authorized type is stored in the Web.config file for the Web applications in which it is used.

    If the farm workflows use custom actions, you should use a file backup system to protect these files and XML entries. Similar to SharePoint Foundation features such as Web Parts and event receivers, these files should be reapplied to the farm as needed after recovery.

  • Workflows that depend on custom code, such as those that are created by using Visual Studio 2010, are stored in two locations. The Visual Studio 2010 assemblies for the workflow are stored in the GAC, and the XML definition files are stored in the Features directory. This is the same as other types of SharePoint Foundation features such as Web Parts and event receivers. If the workflow was installed as part of a solution package, backing up the farm, Web application, content database, or site collection protects these workflows.
  • If you create a custom workflow that interacts with a site collection other than the one where the workflow is deployed, you must back up both site collections to protect the workflow. This includes workflows that write to a history list or other custom list in another site collection. Performing a farm backup is sufficient to back up all site collections in the farm and all workflows that are associated with them.
  • Workflows that are not yet deployed must be backed up and restored separately. When you are developing a new workflow but have not yet deployed it to the SharePoint Foundation farm, make sure that you back up the folder where you store the workflow project files by a file system backup application.
  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.
  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.
  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
  5. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt (that is, PS C:\>), type the following command, and then press ENTER:

    Backup-SPFarm -Directory <Backup folder> -BackupMethod {Full | Differential} -Item <Content database name> [-Verbose]


Note:

If you are backing up the content database for the first time, you must use the Full

option. You must perform a full backup before you can perform a differential backup.

For more information, see Backup-SPFarm (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/c37704b5-5361-4090-a84d-fcdd17bbe345(Office.14).aspx)

 


Note:

We recommend that you use Windows PowerShell when performing command-line administrative tasks. The Stsadm command-line tool has been deprecated, but is included to support compatibility with previous product versions.

 

  • Use Central Administration to back up a content database

    You can use Central Administration to back up a content database.

    To back up a content database by using Central Administration

  1. Verify that the user account that is performing this procedure is a member of the Farm Administrators group.
  2. In Central Administration, on the Home page, in the Backup and Restore section, click Perform a backup.
  3. On the Perform a Backup — Step 1 of 2: Select Component to Back Up page, select the content database that you want to back up from the list of components, and then click Next.


Note:

Not all content databases can be selected in the list. If a database is not selectable, you must use Windows PowerShell to back up the content database.
  1. On the Start Backup — Step 2 of 2: Select Backup Options page, in the Backup Type section, select either Full or Differential.


Note:

If you are backing up the content database for the first time, you must use the Full option. You must perform a full backup before you can perform a differential backup.
  1. In the Backup File Location section, type the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path of the backup folder, and then click Start Backup.
  2. You can view the general status of all backup jobs at the top of the Backup and Restore Job Status page in the Readiness section. You can view the status of the current backup job in the lower part of the page in the Backup section. The status page updates every 30 seconds automatically. You can manually update the status details by clicking Refresh. Backup and recovery are Timer service jobs. Therefore, it may take several seconds for the backup to start.

    If you receive any errors, review the Failure Message column of the Backup and Restore Job Status page. You can also find more details in the Spbackup.log file at the UNC path that you specified in step 4.

  • Use SQL Server tools to back up a content database

    You can use SQL Server tools to back up a content database.

     

    To back up a content database by using SQL Server tools

  1. Verify that the user account that is performing this procedure is a member of the SQL Server db_backupoperator fixed database role on the database server where each database is stored.
  2. Open SQL Server Management Studio and connect to the database server.
  3. In Object Explorer, expand Databases.
  4. Right-click the database that you want to back up, point to Tasks, and then click Back Up.
  5. In the Back Up Database dialog box, in the Source area, select the kind of backup that you want to perform from the Backup type list. For more information about which backup type to use, see Overview of Recovery Models (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=114396) in SQL Server Books Online.
  6. In the Backup component area, click Database.
  7. Either use the default name provided or specify a name for the backup set in the Name text box.
  8. Specify the expiration date for the backup set. This date determines how long, or when, the backup set can be overwritten by any later backups that have the same name. By default, the backup set is set to never expire (0 days).
  9. In the Destination area, specify where you want to store the backup.
  10. Click OK to back up the database.
  11. Repeat steps 1-9 for each content database that you want to back up.
  1. Verify that the account that is used to back up the databases is a member of the SQL Server db_owner fixed database role.
  2. Open SQL Server Management Studio and connect to the database server.
  3. In Object Explorer, expand Databases.
  4. Select the database that you want to back up, and then click New Query.
  5. Copy the following text, and then paste it to the query pane.

CREATE DATABASE <snapshot name>
ON
(
NAME=<logical name of the database file>,
FILENAME = ‘c:\WSS_Backup1.ss’)
AS SNAPSHOT OF <database name>;
  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.
  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.
  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
  5. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt (that is, PS C:\>), type the following command, and then press ENTER:

    Export-SPWeb -Identity <Site URL> -Path <Path and file name> [-ItemUrl <URL of site, list, or library>] [-IncludeUserSecurity] [-IncludeVersions] [-NoFileCompression] [-GradualDelete] [-Verbose]

    If you are exporting a large site, list, or document library, you can use the GradualDelete

    parameter. When this parameter is used, the site collection is marked as deleted, which immediately prevents any further access to its content. The data in the deleted site collection is then deleted gradually over time by a timer job instead of all at once, which reduces its impact on the performance of farm servers and SQL Server.

    To specify which version of the site, list, or document library to include, use the IncludeVersions

    parameter and specify “LastMajor” (default), “CurrentVersion”, “LastMajorandMinor”, or “All”. To include the user security settings with the list or document library, use the IncludeUserSecurity

    parameter. If you want to overwrite the file that you specified, use the Force

    parameter. To view the progress of the backup operation, use the Verbose

    parameter.

    The NoFileCompression

    parameter lets you specify that no file compression is performed during the export process. Using this parameter can lower resource usage up to 30% during the export process. Using this parameter will result in a backup folder being created instead of a compressed file. If you use the NoFileCompression

    parameter in the Export-SPWeb

    command, you must also use it when you import the content by using the Import-SPWeb

    command.

For more information, see Export-SPWeb (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/cd85bf19-6f24-4f13-bd9c-37bbf279ea2b(Office.14).aspx)

 


Note:

We recommend that you use Windows PowerShell when performing command-line administrative tasks. The Stsadm command-line tool has been deprecated, but is included to support compatibility with previous product versions.

  • Use Central Administration to export a site, list, or document library

    You can use Central Administration to export a site, list, or document library. You can only export one site, list, or document library at a time.

     

    To export a site, list, or document library by using Central Administration

  1. Verify that the user account that is performing this procedure is a member of the Farm Administrators group.
  2. In Central Administration, on the Home page, click Backup and Restore.
  3. On the Backup and Restore page, in the Granular Backup section, click Export a site or list.
  4. On the Site or List Export page, in the Site Collection section, select the site collection from the Site Collection list, and then select the site from the Site list.
  5. If you are exporting a site, skip this step, Select the list or document library from the List list.
  6. In the File Location section, in the Filename box, type the UNC path of the shared folder and the file to which you want to export the list or document library. The file name must use the .cmp extension.
  7. If the file already exists and you want to use this file, select the Overwrite existing files check box. Otherwise, specify a different file name.
  8. If you want to export all the security and permissions settings with the list or library, in the Export Full Security section, select the Export full security check box.
  9. If you want to specify which version of the list or library to export, select one of the following versions from the Export versions list:
  • All Versions
  • Last Major
  • Current Version
  • Last Major and Last Minor
  1. When you have specified the settings that you want, click Start Export.
  2. You can view the status of all backup jobs at the top of the Granular Backup Job Status page. You can view the status of the current backup job in the Content Export section of the page. The status page updates every 30 seconds automatically. You can manually update the status details by clicking Refresh. Backup and recovery are Timer service jobs. Therefore, it may take several seconds for the backup to start.

    If you receive any errors, you can review them in the Failure Message column of the Backup and Restore Job Status page. You can also find more details in the <file name>.export.log file at the UNC path that you specified in step 6.

 

 

  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.
  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.
  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
  5. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt, type the following command:

    Merge-SPLogFile -Path “<path to merged log file>.log” -Overwrite

    For example, Merge-SPLogFile -Path “C:\Logs\MergedFiles\AllFarm_merged_12.20.2009.log” -Overwrite


Important:

Merging all log entries for all farm servers can take a long time and use resources. We recommend filtering the entries to match a specific set of criteria before merging.

To merge log entries that match a specific set of criteria, type the following command:

Merge-SPLogFile -Path “<path to merged log file>.log” -Area “<Area>” -Category “<Category>”

You can filter by one or more of the following:

  • Area (one or more, wildcard)
  • Category (one or more, wildcard)
  • Level
  • Correlation (one or more)
  • EventID (one or more, wildcard)
  • Message (wildcard)
  • StartTime
  • EndTime
  • Process (one or more, wildcard)
  • ThreadID (one or more)


Tip:

You can name the merged log file however you want. We recommend that you use a naming convention that makes it easy to determine what the log file contains, such as “<date merged>_<farm name>_<filtering criteria>. For example, to signify all the farm server log entries forSharePoint Foundation 2010 that involve the database category and are marked as “High” use, “Dec_2009_ContosoInternet_Foundation_Database_High.log”.

 

For more information, see Merge-SPLogFile (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/759702d7-bda2-4302-9345-abb43b609ad4(Office.14).aspx)

 

To archive diagnostic logs for a specific server by using Windows PowerShell

  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.
  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.
  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
  5. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt, type the following command:

    Copy-Item <Log folder path> -Destination <Archive folder path> -Recurse

For more information, type Get-Help Copy-Item -Full

.

 


Note:

We recommend that you use Windows PowerShell when performing command-line administrative tasks. The Stsadm command-line tool has been deprecated, but is included to support compatibility with previous product versions.

 

 

 

  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.
  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.
  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
  5. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt (that is, PS C:\>), type the following command, and then press ENTER:

    Add-SPShellAdmin -Username <User account> -Database <Database ID>

    To add a user account to all the databases in the farm, type the following command, and then press ENTER:

    ForEach ($db in Get-SPDatabase) {Add-SPShellAdmin -Username <User account> -Database $db}

    To remove a user account from all the databases in the farm, type the following command, and then press ENTER:

    ForEach ($db in Get-SPDatabase) {Remove-SPShellAdmin -Username <User account> -Database $db}

    To view the user accounts currently added to the databases in the farm, type the following command, and then press ENTER:

    ForEach ($db in Get-SPDatabase) {Get-SPShellAdmin -Database $db}

For more information, see Add-SPShellAdmin (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/2ddfad84-7ca8-409e-878b-d09cb35ed4aa(Office.14).aspx)

You might also have to grant additional permissions to the users running the backup or restore operation by using Windows PowerShell. The following table shows the permissions that are required.

 

Required permissions for Windows PowerShell

 

Farm component

Member of Administrators group on the local computer

Member of Farm Administrators SharePoint group

Full Control on backup folder

Farm

Yes

No

Yes

Content database

Yes

No

Yes

Site collection

No

Yes

Yes

Site, list, document library

Yes

No

Yes

 

 

 

  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.
  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.
  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
  5. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt (that is, PS C:\>), type the following command, and then press ENTER:

    Add-SPShellAdmin -Username <User account> -Database <Database ID>

    To add a user account to all the databases in the farm, type the following command, and then press ENTER:

    ForEach ($db in Get-SPDatabase) {Add-SPShellAdmin -Username <User account> -Database $db}

    To remove a user account from all the databases in the farm, type the following command, and then press ENTER:

    ForEach ($db in Get-SPDatabase) {Remove-SPShellAdmin -Username <User account> -Database $db}

    To view the user accounts currently added to the databases in the farm, type the following command, and then press ENTER:

    ForEach ($db in Get-SPDatabase) {Get-SPShellAdmin -Database $db}

 

For more information, see Add-SPShellAdmin (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/2ddfad84-7ca8-409e-878b-d09cb35ed4aa(Office.14).aspx)

You might also have to grant additional permissions to the users running the backup or restore operation by using Windows PowerShell. The following table shows the permissions that are required.

 

Required permissions for Windows PowerShell

 

Farm component

Member of Administrators group on the local computer

Member of Farm Administrators SharePoint group

Full Control on backup folder

Farm

Yes

No

Yes

Service application

Yes

No

Yes

Content database

Yes

No

Yes

Site collection

No

Yes

Yes

Site, list, document library

Yes

No

Yes

 

 

 

  1. The change logs for all databases are retained when you restore a farm.
  2. The change log for content databases is retained when you reattach or restore a database.

    When a database ID and change log are retained, the search system continues crawling based on the regular schedule that is defined by crawl rules.

    When you restore an existing database and do not use the overwrite option, a new ID is assigned to the restored database, and the database change log is not preserved. The next crawl of the database will add data from the content database to the index.

    If a restore is performed and the ID in the backup package is already being used in the farm, a new ID is assigned to the restored database and a warning is added to the restore log. The ability to perform an incremental crawl instead of a full crawl depends on the content database ID being the same as before and the change log token that is used by the search system being valid for the current change log in the content database. If the change log is not preserved, the token is not valid and the search system has to perform a full crawl.

  • SharePoint Foundation 2010 backup backs up the Business Data Connectivity service external content type definitions but does not back up the data source itself. To protect the data, you should back up the data source when you back up the Business Data Connectivity service or the farm.

    If you restore the Business Data Connectivity service or the farm and then restore the data source to a different location, you must change the location information in the external content type definition. If you do not, the Business Data Connectivity service might be unable to locate the data source.

  • SharePoint Foundation 2010 restores remote Binary Large Objects (BLOB) stores only if you are using the FILESTREAM remote BLOB store provider to put data in remote BLOB stores.

    If you are using another provider, you must manually restore the remote BLOB stores.

  • If a user has taken copies of content for off-line editing in Microsoft SharePoint Workspace 2010 and the content is restored from a backup on the server, when the user re-connects, the server automatically synchronizes the off-line content with the restored content. This might result in data loss on the user’s copies of the content.
  • If you are sharing service applications across farms, be aware that trust certificates that have been exchanged are not included in farm backups. You must back up your certificate store separately or retain the certificates in a separate location. When you restore a farm that shares a service application, you must import and redeploy the certificates, and then re-establish any inter-farm trusts.

    For more information, see Exchange trust certificates between farms (SharePoint Foundation 2010) (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/679d334b-913d-49b3-b086-66a60093b261(Office.14).aspx)

  • After a Web application that is configured to use claims-based authentication has been restored, duplicate or additional claims providers are often visible. If duplicates appear, you must then manually save each Web application zone to remove them. For more information, see Restore a Web application (SharePoint Foundation 2010).
  • Additional steps are required when you restore a farm that contains a Web application that is configured to use forms-based authentication. For more information, see Restore a Web application (SharePoint Foundation 2010).

  • Use Windows PowerShell to restore a farm

    You can use Windows PowerShell to restore a farm.

    To restore a farm by using Windows PowerShell

  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.
  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.
  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
  5. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt, type the following command:

Restore-SPFarm -Directory <BackupFolder> -RestoreMethod Overwrite [-BackupId <GUID>]

Where:

  • <BackupFolder> is the path of the folder you use for storing backup files.
  • <GUID> is the identifier of the backup to restore from.


Note:

If you are not logged on as the Farm account, you are prompted for the Farm account’s credentials.

If you do not specify the BackupId

, the most recent backup will be used. To view the backups for the farm, type the following command:

Get-SPBackupHistory -Directory <BackupFolder> -ShowBackup [-Verbose]

Where:

  • <BackupFolder> is the path of the folder you use for storing backup files.

    You cannot use a configuration-only backup to restore content databases together with the configuration.

  1. To restart a service application, type the following command:

Start-SPServiceInstance -Identity <ServiceApplicationID>

Where:

For more information about restoring the farm by using Windows PowerShell, see Restore-SPFarm (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/8e18ea80-0830-4ffa-b6b6-ad18a5a7ab3e(Office.14).aspx)

 


Note:

We recommend that you use Windows PowerShell when performing command-line administrative tasks. The Stsadm command-line tool has been deprecated, but is included to support compatibility with previous product versions.

 

  • Use Central Administration to restore a farm

    You can use the Central Administration Web site to restore a farm.

     

    To restore a farm by using Central Administration

  1. Verify that the user account that is performing this procedure is a member of the Farm Administrators SharePoint group.
  2. In Central Administration, on the Home page, in the Backup and Restore section, click Restore from a backup.
  3. On the Restore from Backup — Step 1 of 3: Select Backup to Restore page, from the list of backups, select the backup job that contains the farm backup, and then click Next. You can view more details about each backup by clicking the (+) next to the backup.


Note:

If the correct backup job does not appear, in the Backup Directory Location text box, type the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path of the correct backup folder, and then click Refresh.

You cannot use a configuration-only backup to restore the farm.
  1. On the Restore from Backup  — Step 2 of 3: Select Component to Restore page, select the check box that is next to the farm, and then click Next.
  2. On the Restore from Backup — Step 3 of 3: Select Restore Options page, in the Restore Component section, ensure that Farm appears in the Restore the following component list.

    In the Restore Only Configuration Settings section, ensure that the Restore content and configuration settings option is selected.

    In the Restore Options section, under Type of Restore, select the Same configuration option. A dialog box will appear that asks you to confirm the operation. Click OK.


Note:

If the Restore Only Configuration Settings section does not appear, the backup that you selected is a configuration-only backup. You must select another backup.

Click Start Restore.

  1. You can view the general status of all recovery jobs at the top of the Backup and Restore Job Status page in the Readiness section. You can view the status for the current recovery job in the lower part of the page in the Restore section. The status page updates every 30 seconds automatically. You can manually update the status details by clicking Refresh. Backup and recovery are Timer service jobs. Therefore, it may take several seconds for the recovery to start.

    If you receive any errors, you can review them in the Failure Message column of the Backup and Restore Job Status page. You can also find more details in the Sprestore.log file at the UNC path that you specified in step 3.

  2. When the restore process has completed, you may need to restart one or more service applications. In Central Administration, on the Home page, in the Application Management section, click Manage services on server.
  3. On the Services on Server page, start any services related to service applications that you want to run by clicking Start in the Actions column next to the service application.
  4. Re-establish any trust relationships. For more information, see Exchange trust certificates between farms (SharePoint Foundation 2010) (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/679d334b-913d-49b3-b086-66a60093b261(Office.14).aspx).

  • Use SQL Server tools to restore a farm

    Although you cannot restore the complete farm by using SQL Server tools, you can restore most of the farm databases. If you restore the databases by using SQL Server tools, you must restore the farm configuration by using Central Administration or Windows PowerShell. For more information about how to restore the farm’s configuration settings, see Restore a farm configuration (SharePoint Foundation 2010).

     


    Note:

    The search index is not stored in SQL Server. If you use SQL Server tools to back up and restore search, you must perform a full crawl after you restore the content database.

     

    Before you restore SharePoint Foundation 2010, we recommend that you configure a recovery farm for site and item recovery.

    Restore the databases by following these steps:

  1. If possible, back up the live transaction log of the current database to protect any changes that were made after the last full backup.
  2. Restore the last full database backup.
  3. Restore the most recent differential database backup that occurred after the most recent full database backup.
  4. Restore all transaction log backups that occurred after the most recent full or differential database backup.

 

To restore a farm by using SQL Server tools

  1. Verify that the user account that is performing this procedure is a member of the sysadmin fixed server role.
  2. If the Windows SharePoint Services Timer service is running, stop the service and wait for several minutes for any currently running stored procedures to finish. Do not restart the service until after you restore all the databases that you have to restore.
  3. Start SQL Server Management Studio and connect to the database server.
  4. In Object Explorer, expand Databases.
  5. Right-click the database that you want to restore, point to Tasks, point to Restore, and then click Database.

    The database is automatically taken offline during the recovery operation and cannot be accessed by other processes.

  6. In the Restore Database dialog box, specify the destination and the source, and then select the backup set or sets that you want to restore.

    The default values for destination and source are appropriate for most recovery scenarios.

  7. In the Select a page pane, click Options.
  8. In the Restore options section, select only Overwrite the existing database. Unless your environment or policies require otherwise, do not select the other options in this section.
  9. In the Recovery state section:
  • If you have included all the transaction logs that you must restore, select RECOVER WITH RECOVERY.
  • If you must restore additional transaction logs, select RECOVER WITH NORECOVERY.
  • The third option, RECOVER WITH STANDBY is not used in this scenario.


Note:

For more information about these recovery options, see Restore Database (Options Page) (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=114420).
  1. Click OK to complete the recovery operation.
  2. Except for the configuration database, repeat steps 4 through 9 for each database that you are restoring.

 

 

  1. To restore the configuration settings, you must use the existing configuration database or manually create a new database and restore the configuration to that database. For more information about restoring the farm configuration, see Restore a farm configuration (SharePoint Foundation 2010).
  2. Start the Windows SharePoint Services Timer service.
  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.
  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
  3. Click SharePoint 2010 Products.
  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
  5. From the Windows PowerShell command prompt (that is, PS C:\>), type the following command and press ENTER:

    Restore-SPFarm -Directory <RestoreShare> -RestoreMethod Overwrite -ConfigurationOnly

    You must use the ConfigurationOnly

    parameter. To view the progress of the operation, use the Verbose

    parameter.

For more information, see Restore-SPFarm (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/8e18ea80-0830-4ffa-b6b6-ad18a5a7ab3e(Office.14).aspx)

 


Note:

We recommend that you use Windows PowerShell when performing command-line administrative tasks. The Stsadm command-line tool has been deprecated, but is included to support compatibility with previous product versions.

 

  • Use Central Administration to restore a farm’s configuration

    You can use Central Administration to restore a farm’s configuration.

    To restore a farm’s configuration by using Central Administration

  1. Ensure that you are a member of the Farm Administrators SharePoint group on the computer that is running Central Administration and a member of the sysadmin fixed server role on the database server where each database is stored.
  2. In Central Administration, on the Home page, in the Backup and Restore section, click Restore from a backup.
  3. On the Restore from Backup — Step 1 of 3: Select Backup to Restore page, select the backup job that contains the farm backup from the list of backups, and then click Next.


Note:

You can view additional information about the backups by expanding the row that contains the backup.


Note:

If the correct backup job does not appear, in the Backup Directory Location text box, enter the UNC path of the correct backup folder, and then click Refresh.
  1. On the Restore from Backup  — Step 2 of 3: Select Component to Restore page, select the check box that is next to the farm, and then click Next.
  2. On the Restore from Backup  — Step 3 of 3: Select Restore Options page, in the Restore Component section, ensure that “Farm” appears in the Restore the following content list.

    In the Restore Only Configuration Settings section, ensure that the Restore content and configuration settings option is selected.

    In the Restore Options section, select the Type of Restore option. Use the Same configuration setting. A dialog box will appear that asks you to confirm the operation. Click OK.


Note:

If the Restore Only Configuration Settings section does not appear, then the backup that you selected is a configuration-only backup.

Click Start Restore.

  1. You can view the general status of all recovery jobs at the top of the Backup and Restore Status page in the Readiness section. You can view the status of the current recovery job in the lower part of the page in the Restore section. The status page updates every 30 seconds automatically. You can manually update the status details by clicking Refresh. Backup and recovery are Timer service jobs. Therefore, it may take several seconds for the recovery to start.

    If you receive any errors, you can review them in the Failure Message column of the Backup and Restore Job Status page. You can also find more details in the Sprestore.log file at the UNC path that you specified in step 2.

  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.
  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.
  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
  5. Using Notepad, create a text file and then copy and paste the following script into the file. The commands in the example create XML files that document the configurations of the Web applications and service applications in the current farm. Choose only those commands that are relevant to your environment.

##
## Common SharePoint configuration settings
##
#Retrieve Web Application information. The default depth of 2 does not return much detail–we recommend that you use a depth of 4 for this cmdlet.
Get-SPWebApplication | Export-Clixml .\ WebAppFilename.xml -depth 4

#Retrieve custom layout information.
Get-SPWebApplication | Get-SPCustomLayoutsPage | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPCustomLayoutsPage.xml

#Determine how SharePoint designer access is configured
Get-SPWebApplication | Get-SPDesignerSettings | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPDesignerSettings.xml

#Retrieve information about alternate access mapping
Get-SPAlternateURL | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPAlternateURL.xml

#Retrieve information about content databases
Get-SPContentDatabase | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPContentDatabase.xml

#Retrieve database properties for each database
Get-SPDatabase | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPDatabase.xml

#Retrieve information about all SharePoint Products installed in the farm, and the versions of all updates installed for each product.
Get-SPProduct | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPProduct.xml

#Retrieve farm information
Get-SPFarm | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPFarm.xml
Get-SPFarmConfig | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPFarmConfig.xml

#Retrieve information about the servers in the farm
Get-SPServer | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPServer.xml

#Retrieve information about installed features
Get-SPFeature | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPFeature.xml

#Retrieve information about globally-installed site templates
Get-SPWebTemplate | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPWebTemplate.xml

#Retrieve information about deployed solutions
Get-SPSolution | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPSolution.xml

#Retrieve information about sandboxed solutions deployed in a site collection
Get-SPSite | Get-SPUserSolution | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPUserSolution.xml

#Retrieve information about installed Help
Get-SPHelpCollection | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPHelpCollection.xml

#Retrieve information about the logging levels that have been set
Get-SPLogLevel | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPLogLevel.xml

#Retrieve information about the sites in the farm
Get-SPSite | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPSite.xml
Get-SPSiteAdministration | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPSiteAdministration.xml
Get-SPSiteSubscription | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPSiteSubscription.xml

#Retrieve ULS logging information
Get-SPDiagnosticConfig | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPDiagnosticConfig.xml
Get-SPDiagnosticsPerformanceCounter | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPDiagnosticsPerformanceCounter.xml
Get-SPDiagnosticsProvider | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPDiagnosticsProvider.xml

#Retrieve information about accounts registered in the configuration database
Get-SPManagedAccount | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPManagedAccount.xml
Get-SPProcessAccount | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPProcessAccount.xml
Get-SPShellAdmin | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPShellAdmin.xml

#Retrieve information about the Mobile Messaging account.
Get-SPWebApplication | Get-SPMobileMessagingAccount | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPMobileMessagingAccount.xml

##
##Common service infrastructure settings
##
#Retrieve information about the service applications in the farm
Get-SPServiceApplication | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPServiceApplication.xml
Get-SPServiceApplicationPool | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPServiceApplicationPool.xml
Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy.xml
Get-SPServiceApplicationProxyGroup | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPServiceApplicationProxyGroup.xml
Get-SPServiceApplication | Get-SPServiceApplicationEndpoint | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPServiceApplicationEndpoint.xml

#Retrieve information about the services running in the farm
Get-SPServiceInstance | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPServiceInstance.xml

#Retrieve information about common Web service settings
Get-SPServiceHostConfig | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPServiceHostConfig.xml

##
## Common service application configurations
##

#Application Discovery and Load Balancer Service Application
Get-SPTopologyServiceApplication | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPTopologyServiceApplication.xml
Get-SPTopologyServiceApplicationProxy | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPTopologyServiceApplicationProxy.xml

#Business Data Connectivity Service
#Retrieve information about data connection files. ###WARNING: The following cmdlet requires run as administrator rights
Get-SPDataConnectionFile | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPDataConnectionFile.xml
###WARNING: The following cmdlet requires run as administrator rights
Get-SPDataConnectionFile | Get-SPDataConnectionFileDependent | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPDataConnectionFileDependent.xml

#Security Token Service Application
#Retrieve information about the security token service used for incoming SOAP messages.
Get-SPSecurityTokenServiceConfig | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPSecurityTokenServiceConfig.xml

#Usage and Health data collection
#Retrieve information about the Usage and Health Data Collection service application.
Get-SPUsageApplication | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPUsageApplication.xml
Get-SPUsageDefinition | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPUsageDefinition.xml
Get-SPUsageService | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPUsageService.xml

###Note: These cmdlets are commented out because you are unlikely to want to run them. ###
#Get-SPSite | %{$web=Get-SPWeb $_.Url;$webid=$web.Id;$web | Get-SPUser | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPUser-$webid.xml}

# Get-SPSite | %{$web=Get-SPWeb $_.Url;$webid=$web.Id;$web | Export-Clixml .\Get-SPWeb-$webid.xml}
  1. To run the script, in the Windows PowerShell console, at the command prompt (that is, PS C:\>), type the following command and press ENTER:C:\<path>\<filename>.ps1

 

For more information, see Export-Clixml (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd347657.aspx) Get-SPWebApplication (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/11d6521f-f99c-433e-9ab5-7cf9e953457a(Office.14).aspx), Get-SPServiceApplication (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/71a467dc-3b95-4b65-af93-0d0d6ebb8326(Office.14).aspx).

  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.
  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.
  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
  5. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt, type the following command to document the current Web application URLs and content database mappings.

Get-SPWebApplication | %{$_.Name;$_.Url;%{$_.ContentDatabases|%{$_.Name};Write-Host “”}}
  1. Either dismount all content databases, as in the following example:

Get-SPContentDatabase | Dismount-SPContentDatabase

Or dismount a specific content database, as in the following example:

Get-SPContentDatabase WSS_Content | Dismount-SPContentDatabase
  1. Back up the farm.

Backup-SPFarm -Directory \\servername\share -BackupMethod Full


Note:

You can view the progress of the backup by looking at the \\servername\share\spbr####\spbackup.log file.
  1. After the backup is complete, re-mount the content databases. Replace <WSS_Content> and <http://servername&gt; with each of the mappings documented in step 5).

Mount-SPContentDatabase -Name <WSS_Content> -WebApplication <http://servername&gt;
  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.
  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.
  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
  5. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt, type the following command:

Restore-SPFarm -Directory <BackupFolderName> -RestoreMethod Overwrite -Item  <WebApplicationName> [-BackupId <GUID>] [-Verbose]

Where:

  • <BackupFolderName> is the full path to the folder you use for backup files.
  • <WebApplicationName> is the name of the Web application that was backed up.
  • <GUID> is the identifier of the back up to use for the restore operation.

    If you do not specify the value of the BackupID

    parameter, the most recent backup will be used. You cannot restore a Web application by using a configuration-only backup. You can view the backups for the farm by typing the following:

Get-SPBackupHistory -Directory <BackupFolderName> -ShowBackup

For more information, see Restore-SPFarm (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/8e18ea80-0830-4ffa-b6b6-ad18a5a7ab3e(Office.14).aspx).

 


Note:

We recommend that you use Windows PowerShell when performing command-line administrative tasks. The Stsadm command-line tool has been deprecated, but is included to support compatibility with previous product versions.

 

  1. Verify that the user account performing this procedure is a member of the Farm Administrators group. Additionally, verify that the Windows SharePoint Services Timer V4 service and the Farm Database Access account have Full Control permissions on the backup folder.
  2. In Central Administration, on the Home page, in the Backup and Restore section, click Restore from a backup.
  3. On the Restore from Backup — Step 1 of 3: Select Backup to Restore page, from the list of backups, select the backup job that contains the farm or Web application backup, and then click Next. You can view more details about each backup by clicking the (+) next to the backup.


Note:

If the correct backup job does not appear, in the Current Directory Location text box, type the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path of the correct backup folder, and then click Refresh.

You cannot use a configuration-only backup to restore the Web application.
  1. On the Restore from Backup — Step 2 of 3: Select Component to Restore page, select the check box that is next to the Web application, and then click Next.
  2. On the Restore from Backup — Step 3 of 3: Select Restore Options page, in the Restore Component section, make sure that Farm\<Web application> appears in the Restore the following content list.

    In the Restore Only Configuration Settings section, make sure that the Restore content and configuration settings option is selected.

    In the Restore Options section, under Type of Restore, select the Same configuration option. A dialog box appears that asks you to confirm the operation. Click OK.


Note:

If the Restore Only Configuration Settings section does not appear, the backup that you selected is a configuration-only backup. You must select another backup.

Click Start Restore.

  1. You can view the general status of all recovery jobs at the top of the Backup and Restore Job Status page in the Readiness section. You can view the status for the current recovery job in the lower part of the page in the Restore section. The status page updates every 30 seconds automatically. You can manually update the status details by clicking Refresh. Backup and recovery are Timer service jobs. Therefore, it may take several seconds for the recovery to start.

    If you receive any errors, you can review them in the Failure Message column of the Backup and Restore Job Status page. You can also find more details in the Sprestore.log file at the UNC path that you specified.

  • Use SQL Server tools to restore databases associated with a Web application

    You cannot restore the complete Web application by using SQL Server tools. However, you can restore all the databases that are associated with the Web application. To restore the complete Web application, use either Windows PowerShell or Central Administration.

    To restore databases associated with a Web application by using SQL Server tools

  1. Verify that the user account performing this procedure is a member of the sysadmin fixed server role.
  2. If the Windows SharePoint Services Timer service is running, stop the service and wait for several minutes for any currently running stored procedures to finish. Do not restart the service until after you restore the databases.
  3. Start SQL Server Management Studio and connect to the database server.
  4. In Object Explorer, expand Databases.
  5. Right-click the database that you want to restore, point to Tasks, point to Restore, and then click Database.

    The database is automatically taken offline during the recovery operation and cannot be accessed by other processes.

  6. In the Restore Database dialog box, specify the destination and the source, and then select the backup set or sets that you want to restore.

    The default values for destination and source are appropriate for most recovery scenarios.

  7. In the Select a page pane, click Options.
  8. In the Restore options section, select only Overwrite the existing database. Unless the environment or policies require otherwise, do not select the other options in this section.
  9. In the Recovery state section:
  • If you have included all the transaction logs that you must restore, select RECOVER WITH RECOVERY.
  • If you must restore additional transaction logs, select RECOVER WITH NORECOVERY.
  • The third option, RECOVER WITH STANDBY is not used in this scenario.


Note:

For more information about these recovery options, see Restore Database (Options Page) (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=114420).
  1. Click OK to complete the recovery operation.
  2. Repeat steps 4 through 10 for each database that you are restoring.
  3. Start the Windows SharePoint Services Timer service.
  1. Re-register the membership and role providers in the Web.config file.
  2. Redeploy the providers.

For more information, see Configure forms-based authentication for a claims-based Web application (SharePoint Foundation 2010) (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/f7b57d4b-87d7-41e6-9e55-350d6ad41894(Office.14).aspx).

  1. In Central Administration, click Manage Web application, select a Web application that uses claims-based authentication, and then click Authentication Providers.
  2. Select a zone that the Web application is associated with to open the Edit Authentication page, and then click Save.
  3. Repeat for each zone, and then for each Web application that uses claims-based authentication.
  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.
  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.
  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
  5. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt, type the following command:

    Restore-SPFarm -Directory <BackupFolder> -Item <ServiceApplicationName> -RecoveryMethod Overwrite [-BackupId <GUID>] [-Verbose]

    To specify which backup to use, use the BackupId

    parameter. You can view the backups for the farm by typing the following: Get-SPBackupHistory -Directory <Backup folder> -ShowBackup

    . If you do not specify the BackupId

    , the most recent backup will be used. You cannot restore a service application from a configuration-only backup.

 

For more information, see Restore-SPFarm (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/8e18ea80-0830-4ffa-b6b6-ad18a5a7ab3e(Office.14).aspx).


Note:

We recommend that you use Windows PowerShell when performing command-line administrative tasks. The Stsadm command-line tool has been deprecated, but is included to support compatibility with previous product versions.

 

  • Use Central Administration to restore a service application

    Use the following procedure to restore a service application by using the SharePoint Central Administration Web site.

     

    To restore a service application by using Central Administration

  1. Verify that the user account that is performing this procedure is a member of the Farm Administrators SharePoint group.
  2. In Central Administration, on the Home page, in the Backup and Restore section, click Restore from a backup.
  3. On the Restore from Backup — Step 1 of 3: Select Backup to Restore page, select the backup job that contains the service application backup, or a farm-level backup, from the list of backups, and then click Next. You can view more details about each backup by clicking the (+) next to the backup.


Note:

If the correct backup job does not appear, in the Backup Directory Location text box, type the path of the correct backup folder, and then click Refresh.

You cannot use a configuration-only backup to restore the farm.
  1. On the Restore from Backup — Step 2 of 3: Select Component to Restore page, expand Shared Services Applications, select the check box that is next to the service application, and then click Next.
  2. On the Restore from Backup — Step 3 of 3: Select Restore Options page, in the Restore Component section, make sure that Farm\Shared Services Applications\<Service application> appears in the Restore the following component list.

    In the Restore Options section, under Type of restore, select the Same configuration option. A dialog box will appear that asks you to confirm the operation. Click OK.

    Click Start Restore.

  3. You can view the general status of all recovery jobs at the top of the Backup and Restore Job Status page in the Readiness section. You can view the status for the current recovery job in the lower part of the page in the Restore section. The status page updates every 30 seconds automatically.

    You can manually update the status details by clicking Refresh. Backup and recovery are Timer service jobs. Therefore, it may take a several seconds for the recovery to start.

    If you receive any errors, you can review them in the Failure Message column of the Backup and Restore Job Status page. You can also find more details in the Sprestore.log file at the UNC path that you specified in step 3.

  • Use SQL Server tools to restore the databases for a service application

    You cannot restore the complete service application by using SQL Server tools. However, you can use SQL Server tools to restore the databases that are associated with the service application. To restore the complete service application, use either Windows PowerShell or Central Administration.

     

    To restore the databases for a service application by using SQL Server tools

  1. Verify that the user account that you are using to restore the databases is a member of the SQL Server sysadmin fixed server role on the database server where each database is stored.
  2. Open SQL Server Management Studio and connect to the database server.
  3. In Object Explorer, expand Databases.
  4. Right-click the database that you want to restore, point to Tasks, point to Restore, and then click Database.
  5. In the Restore Database dialog box, on the General page, select the database to restore to from the To database drop-down list.
  6. Select the restore source from the From database drop-down list.
  7. In the Select the backup sets to restore section area, select the check box next to the database.
  8. On the Options tab, select the recovery state from the Recover state section.

    For more information about which recovery type to use, see Overview of Recovery Models (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=114396) in SQL Server Books Online.

  9. Click OK to restore the database.
  10. Repeat steps 1-9 for each database that is associated with the service application.

 

 

  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin. Additionally, verify that the user account performing this procedure has read permissions to the backup folder and is a member of the db_owner fixed database role on both the farm configuration database and the content database where the site collection is being restored.
  2. On the Start menu, click Administrative Tools.
  3. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
  4. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt (that is, PS C:\>), type the following command, and then press ENTER:

    Restore-SPSite -Identity <Site collection URL> -Path <Backup file> [-DatabaseServer <Database server name>] [-DatabaseName <Content database name>] [-HostHeader <Host header>] [-Force] [-GradualDelete] [-Verbose]

    If you want to restore the site collection to a specific content database, use the DatabaseServer

    and DatabaseName

    parameters to specify the content database. If you do not specify a content database, the site collection will be restored to a content database chosen by Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010.

     

    If you are restoring a host-named site collection, use the Identity

    parameter to specify the URL of the host-named site collection and use the HostHeader

    parameter to specify the URL of the Web application that will hold the host-named site collection.

    If you want to overwrite an existing site collection, use the Force

    parameter.

     


Note:

If the site collection that you are restoring is 1 gigabyte or larger, you can use the GradualDelete

parameter for better performance during the restore process. When this parameter is used, the site collection that is overwritten is marked as deleted, which immediately prevents any additional access to its content. The data in the marked site collection is then deleted gradually over time by a timer job instead of all at the same time, which reduces the impact on server performance.

For more information, see Restore-SPSite (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/90f19a58-0455-470c-a8ee-3129fc341f62(Office.14).aspx).

 


Note:

We recommend that you use Windows PowerShell when performing command-line administrative tasks. The Stsadm command-line tool has been deprecated, but is included to support compatibility with previous product versions.

 

  1. Verify that the user account that is performing this procedure is a member of the Farm Administrators SharePoint group.
  2. In Central Administration, on the Home page, in the Backup and Restore section, click Restore from a backup.
  3. On the Restore from Backup — Step 1 of 3: Select Backup to Restore page, from the list of backups, select the backup job that contains the solution package, and then click Next. You can view more details about each backup by clicking the (+) next to the backup.


Note:

If the correct backup job does not appear, in the Backup Directory Location text box, type the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path of the correct backup folder, and then click Refresh.

  1. On the Restore from Backup  — Step 2 of 3: Select Component to Restore page, select the check box that is next to the solution, and then click Next.
  2. On the Restore from Backup — Step 3 of 3: Select Restore Options page, in the Restore Component section, ensure that Solution appears in the Restore the following component list.

    In the Restore Only Configuration Settings section, ensure that the Restore content and configuration settings option is selected.

    In the Restore Options section, under Type of Restore, select the Same configuration option. A dialog box appears that asks you to confirm the operation. Click OK.

    Click Start Restore.

  3. You can view the general status of all recovery jobs at the top of the Backup and Restore Job Status page in the Readiness section. You can view the status for the current recovery job in the lower part of the page in the Restore section. The status page updates every 30 seconds automatically. You can manually update the status details by clicking Refresh. Backup and recovery are Timer service jobs. Therefore, it may take several seconds for the recovery to start.

    If you receive any errors, you can review them in the Failure Message column of the Backup and Restore Job Status page. You can also find more details in the Sprestore.log file at the UNC path that you specified in step 3.

     

To restore a trusted solution by using Windows PowerShell

  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.
  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.
  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.

 

  1. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt, type the following command:

Restore-SPFarm -Directory <BackupFolder> -RestoreMethod Overwrite -BackupId <GUID> -Item <SolutionPath>

Where:

  • <BackupFolder> is the UNC location of the directory that you want to restore from.
  • <GUID> is the GUID of the backup ID that you want to restore from. If you do not specify a backup, the most recent one is used.
  • <SolutionPath> is the path of the solution within the backup tree (usually farm\solutions\SolutionName).

 

For more information, see Restore-SPFarm (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/8e18ea80-0830-4ffa-b6b6-ad18a5a7ab3e(Office.14).aspx).

 


Note:

We recommend that you use Windows PowerShell when performing command-line administrative tasks. The Stsadm command-line tool has been deprecated, but is included to support compatibility with previous product versions.

 

Restoring a sandboxed solution

You cannot restore only customizations that were deployed as sandboxed solutions. Instead, you must restore the farm, Web application, content database, or site collection with which the customization is associated. For more information about these methods of restoring, see Related content later in this article.

  • Restoring authored site elements

    You cannot restore only authored site elements. Instead, you must restore the farm, Web application, or content database with which the authored site element is associated. For more information about these methods of backing up, see Related content.

  • Restoring workflows

    Workflows are a special case of customizations that you can restore. Make sure that the backup and recovery plan includes any of the following scenarios that apply to the environment:

    • Declarative workflows, such as those created in Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010, are stored in the content database for the site collection to which they are they are deployed. Restoring the content database or site collection restores these workflows.
    • Custom declarative workflow actions have components in the following three locations:
  1. The Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 assemblies for the actions are stored in the global assembly cache (GAC).
  2. The XML definition files (.actions files) are stored in the 14\TEMPLATE\<LCID>\Workflow directory.
  3. An XML entry to mark the action as an authorized type is stored in the Web.config file for the Web applications in which it is used.

    If the farm workflows use custom actions, you should use a file restore system to restore these files and XML entries. You can reapply the files as needed after recovery.

  • Workflows that depend on custom code, such as those that are created by using Visual Studio 2010, are stored in two locations. The Visual Studio 2010 assemblies for the workflow are stored in the GAC, and the XML definition files are stored in the Features directory. This is the same as other types of SharePoint Foundation features such as Web Parts and event receivers. If the workflow was installed as part of a solution package, follow the instructions for restoring solution packages.
  • If you create a custom workflow that interacts with a site collection other than the one where the workflow is deployed, you must restore both site collections to recover the workflow. Restoring a farm is sufficient to recover all site collections in the farm and all workflows that are associated with them.
  • Workflows that have not been deployed must be restored separately by using a file system backup application.
  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.
  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.
  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
  5. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt (that is, PS C:\>), type the following command, and then press ENTER:

    Restore-SPFarm -Directory <Backup folder name> -RestoreMethod Overwrite -Item <Content database name> [-BackupId <GUID>] [-Verbose]


Note:

If you are not logged on as the Farm account, you are prompted for the Farm account’s credentials.

If you do not use the BackupId

parameter, the most recent backup will be used. To view a list of the backups, including their Backup IDs, type the following command, and then press ENTER:

Get-SPBackupHistory -Directory <Backup folder>

For more information, see Restore-SPFarm (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/8e18ea80-0830-4ffa-b6b6-ad18a5a7ab3e(Office.14).aspx).

 


Note:

We recommend that you use Windows PowerShell when performing command-line administrative tasks. The Stsadm command-line tool has been deprecated, but is included to support compatibility with previous product versions.

 

  • Use Central Administration to restore a content database

    You can use Central Administration to restore a farm or components of a farm.

     

    To restore a content database by using Central Administration

  1. Verify that you are logged on as a member of the Farm Administrators group.
  2. In Central Administration, on the Home page, in the Backup and Restore section, click Restore from a backup.
  3. On the Restore from Backup — Step 1 of 3: Select Backup to Restore page, from the list of backups, select the backup job that contains the content database backup, and then click Next.


Note:

If the correct backup job does not appear, in the Current Directory Location text box, enter the path of the correct backup folder, and then click Refresh.
  1. On the Restore from Backup — Step 2 of 3: Select Component to Restore page, select the check box that is next to the content database, and then click Next.


Note:

If the content database is not selectable, you must use Windows PowerShell or SQL Server tools to restore the content database.
  1. On the Restore from Backup — Step 3 of 3: Select Restore Options page, in the Restore Options section, under Type of Restore, click the Same configuration option. A dialog box appears that asks you to confirm the operation. Click OK.

    Click Start Restore.

  2. You can view the general status of all recovery jobs at the top of the Backup and Restore Job Status page in the Readiness section. You can view the status for the current recovery job in the lower part of the page in the Restore section. The status page updates every 30 seconds automatically. You can manually update the status details by clicking Refresh. Backup and recovery are Timer service jobs. Therefore, it may take several seconds for the recovery to start.

    If you receive any errors, you can review them in the Failure Message column of the Backup and Restore Job Status page. You can also find more details in the Sprestore.log file at the UNC path that you specified in step 2.

  • Use SQL Server tools to restore a content database

    You can use SQL Server tools to restore a content database by following these steps:

  1. If possible, back up the live transaction log of the content database to protect any changes that were made after the last full backup.
  2. Restore the last full database backup.
  3. Restore the most recent differential database backup that occurred after the most recent full database backup.
  4. Restore all transaction log backups that occurred after the most recent full or differential database backup.

 

To restore a content database by using SQL Server tools

  1. Verify that the user account performing this procedure is a member of the sysadmin fixed server role.
  2. If the Windows SharePoint Services Timer service is running, stop the service and wait for several minutes for any currently running stored procedures to finish. Do not restart the service until after you restore the content databases.
  3. Start SQL Server Management Studio and connect to the database server.
  4. In Object Explorer, expand Databases.
  5. Right-click the database that you want to restore, point to Tasks, point to Restore, and then click Database.

    The database is automatically taken offline during the recovery operation and cannot be accessed by other processes.

  6. In the Restore Database dialog box, specify the destination and the source, and then select the backup set or sets that you want to restore.

    The default values for destination and source are appropriate for most recovery scenarios.

  7. In the Select a page pane, click Options.
  8. In the Restore options section, select only Overwrite the existing database. Unless the environment or policies require otherwise, do not select the other options in this section.
  9. In the Recovery state section:
  • If you have included all the transaction logs that you must restore, select RECOVER WITH RECOVERY.
  • If you must restore additional transaction logs, select RECOVER WITH NORECOVERY.
  • The third option, RECOVER WITH STANDBY is not used in this scenario.


Note:

For more information about these recovery options, see Restore Database (Options Page) (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=114420).
  1. Click OK to complete the recovery operation.
  2. Repeat steps 4 through 10 for each database that you are restoring.
  3. Start the Windows SharePoint Services Timer service.
  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.
  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.
  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
  5. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt (that is, PS C:\>), type the following command, and then press ENTER:

    Mount-SPContentDatabase -Name <Database name> -WebApplication <Web application ID> [-Verbose]


Note:

Attaching a content database by using the Mount-SPContentDatabase

cmdlet differs from attaching a database in SQL Server by using SQL Server tools. Mount-SPContentDatabase

associates the content database with a Web application so that the contents can be read.

 

For more information, see Mount-SPContentDatabase (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/20d1bc07-805c-44d3-a278-e2793370e237(Office.14).aspx).

 


Note:

We recommend that you use Windows PowerShell when performing command-line administrative tasks. The Stsadm command-line tool has been deprecated, but is included to support compatibility with previous product versions.

 

  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.
  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.
  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
  5. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt (that is, PS C:\>), type the following command, and then press ENTER:

    Import-SPWeb -Identity <Site URL> -Path <Export file name> [-Force] [-NoFileCompression] [-Verbose]


Important:

The site or subsite that you are importing must have a template that matches the template of the site specified by Identity

.

You can also use the Get-SPWeb

cmdlet and pass the ID to Import-SPWeb

by using the Windows PowerShell pipeline. The value of the Path

parameter specifies the path and file name of the file from which to import the list or library. To include the user security settings with the list or document library, use the IncludeUserSecurity

parameter. To overwrite the list or library that you specified, use the Force

parameter. You can use the UpdateVersions

parameter to specify how versioning conflicts will be handled. To view the progress of the operation, use the Verbose

parameter.

The NoFileCompression

parameter lets you specify that no file compression is performed during the import process. Using this parameter can lower resource usage up to 30% during the export and import process. If you are importing a site, list, or document library that you exported from Central Administration, or if you exported a site, list, or document library by using Windows PowerShell and you did not use the NoFileCompression

parameter in the Export-SPWeb

cmdlet, you cannot use this parameter in the Import-SPWeb

cmdlet.


Note:

There is no facility in the Import-SPWeb

cmdlet import a subset of the items in the export file. Therefore, the import operation will import everything from the file.

For more information, see Import-SPWeb (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/2ecc5b6e-1b23-4367-a966-b7bd3377db3a(Office.14).aspx).

 


Note:

We recommend that you use Windows PowerShell when performing command-line administrative tasks. The Stsadm command-line tool has been deprecated, but is included to support compatibility with previous product versions.

 

  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.
  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.
  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
  5. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt, type the following commands, and then press ENTER:

    $db = get-spdatabase | where {$_.Name -eq “database name“}

    $db.AddFailoverServiceInstance(“mirrored database name“)

    $db.Update()

For more information, see Get-SPDatabase (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/c9802bf8-5216-4ade-b559-7ee25fcfa666(Office.14).aspx).

  1. On the principal server, create a certificate and open a port for mirroring.

–On the master database, create the database master key, if needed
CREATE MASTER KEY ENCRYPTION BY PASSWORD = ‘<test1234->’;
GO
— Make a certificate for this server instance.
USE master;
CREATE CERTIFICATE <MASTER_HostA_cert>
WITH SUBJECT = ‘<Master_HostA certificate>’;
GO
–Create a mirroring endpoint for server instance by using the certificate
CREATE ENDPOINT Endpoint_Mirroring
STATE = STARTED
AS TCP (
LISTENER_PORT=5024
, LISTENER_IP = ALL
)
FOR DATABASE_MIRRORING (
AUTHENTICATION = CERTIFICATE <MASTER_HostA_cert>
, ENCRYPTION = REQUIRED ALGORITHM RC4
, ROLE = ALL
);
GO
  1. On the principal server, back up the certificate.

–Back up the HOST_A certificate.
BACKUP CERTIFICATE MASTER_HostA_cert TO FILE = ‘<c:\MASTER_HostA_cert.cer>’;
GO
  1. On the principal server, back up the database. This example uses the configuration database. Repeat for all databases.

USE master;
–Ensure that SharePoint_Config uses the full recovery model.
ALTER DATABASE SharePoint_Config
SET RECOVERY FULL;
GO
USE SharePoint_Config
BACKUP DATABASE SharePoint_Config
TO DISK = ‘<c:\SharePoint_Config.bak>’
WITH FORMAT
GO
BACKUP Log SharePoint_Config
TO DISK = ‘<c:\SharePoint_Config_log.bak>’
WITH FORMAT
GO
  1. Copy the backup file to the mirror server. Repeat for all databases.
  2. By using any secure copy method, copy the backup certificate file (C:\HOST_HostA_cert.cer, for example) to the mirror server.
  3. On the principal server, create a login and user for the mirror server, associate the certificate with the user, and grant the login connect permissions for the partnership.

–Create a login on HOST_A for HOST_B
USE master;
CREATE LOGIN <HOST_HostB_login> WITH PASSWORD = ‘<1234-test>’;
GO
–Create a user for that login.
CREATE USER <HOST_HostB_user> FOR LOGIN <HOST_HostB_login>;
GO
–Associate the certificate with the user
CREATE CERTIFICATE <HOST_HostB_cert>
AUTHORIZATION <HOST_HostB_user>
FROM FILE = ‘<c:\HOST_HostB_cert.cer>’ –do not use a network path, SQL Server will give an error about the key not being valid
GO
–Grant CONNECT permission on the login for the remote mirroring endpoint.
GRANT CONNECT ON ENDPOINT::Endpoint_Mirroring TO [<HOST_HostB_login>];
GO

 

To set up the mirror server for outbound connections

  1. On the mirror server, create a certificate and open a port for mirroring.

–On the master database, create the database master key, if needed.
USE master;
CREATE MASTER KEY ENCRYPTION BY PASSWORD = ‘<1234-test>’;
GO
— Make a certificate on the HOST_B server instance.
CREATE CERTIFICATE <HOST_HostB>
WITH SUBJECT = ‘<HOST_HostB certificate for database mirroring>’;
GO
–Create a mirroring endpoint for the server instance on HOST_B.
CREATE ENDPOINT Endpoint_Mirroring
STATE = STARTED
AS TCP (
LISTENER_PORT=5024
, LISTENER_IP = ALL
)
FOR DATABASE_MIRRORING (
AUTHENTICATION = CERTIFICATE <HOST_HostB>
, ENCRYPTION = REQUIRED ALGORITHM RC4
, ROLE = ALL
);
GO
  1. On the mirror server, back up the certificate.

–Back up the HOST_B certificate.
BACKUP CERTIFICATE <HOST_HostB> TO FILE = ‘<C:\HOST_HostB_cert.cer>’;
GO

  1. By using any secure copy method, copy the backup certificate file (C:\HOST_HostB_cert.cer, for example) to the principal server.
  2. On the mirror server, restore the database from the backup files. This example uses the configuration database. Repeat for all databases.

RESTORE DATABASE SharePoint_Config
FROM DISK = ‘<c:\SharePoint_Config.bak>’
WITH NORECOVERY
GO
RESTORE log SharePoint_Config
FROM DISK = ‘<c:\SharePoint_Config_log.bak>’
WITH NORECOVERY
GO

 

To set up the mirror server for inbound connections

  1. On the mirror server, create a login and user for the principal server, associate the certificate with the user, and grant the login connect permissions for the partnership.

–Create a login on HOST_B for HOST_A
USE master;
CREATE LOGIN <MASTER_HostA_login> WITH PASSWORD = ‘<test1234->’;
GO
–Create a user for that login.
CREATE USER <MASTER_HostA_user> FOR LOGIN <MASTER_HostA_login>;
GO
–Associate the certificate with the user
CREATE CERTIFICATE <MASTER_HostA_cert>
AUTHORIZATION <MASTER_HostA_user>
FROM FILE = ‘<c:\MASTER_HostA_cert.cer>’ –do not use a network path, SQL Server will give an error about the key not being valid
GO
–Grant CONNECT permission on the login for the remote mirroring endpoint.
GRANT CONNECT ON ENDPOINT::Endpoint_Mirroring TO [<MASTER_HostA_login>];
GO

 

To set up the principal server for inbound connections

  1. On the principal server, create a login and user for the mirror server, associate the certificate with the user, and grant the login connect permissions for the partnership.

–Create a login on HOST_A for HOST_B
USE master;
CREATE LOGIN <HOST_HostB_login> WITH PASSWORD = ‘<1234-test>’;
GO
–Create a user for that login.
CREATE USER <HOST_HostB_user> FOR LOGIN <HOST_HostB_login>;
GO
–Associate the certificate with the user
CREATE CERTIFICATE <HOST_HostB_cert>
AUTHORIZATION <HOST_HostB_user>
FROM FILE = ‘<c:\HOST_HostB_cert.cer>’ –do not use a network path, SQL Server will give an error about the key not being valid
GO
–Grant CONNECT permission on the login for the remote mirroring endpoint.
GRANT CONNECT ON ENDPOINT::Endpoint_Mirroring TO [<HOST_HostB_login>];
GO

 

To set up the mirroring partners

  1. On the principal server, set up the mirroring partnership. This example uses the configuration database. Repeat for all databases.

–At HOST_A, set the server instance on HOST_B as a partner (mirror server).
ALTER DATABASE SharePoint_Config
SET PARTNER = ‘<TCP://databasemirror.adatum.com:5024>’;
GO
  1. On the mirror server, set up the mirroring partnership. This example uses the configuration database. Repeat for all databases.

–At HOST_B, set the server instance on HOST_A as a partner (principal server):
ALTER DATABASE SharePoint_Config
SET PARTNER = ‘<TCP://databasemaster.adatum.com:5024>’;
GO

  • Set up a witness server

    Each step lists the server on which it should be performed. Use Transact-SQL to send these commands to SQL Server. Placeholder information is denoted by angle brackets (<>); replace this with information that is specific to your deployment.

  1. On the witness server, set up the certificate and open the port.

–On the master database, create the database master key, if needed
CREATE MASTER KEY ENCRYPTION BY PASSWORD = ‘<1234test->’;
GO
— Make a certificate for this server instance.
USE master;
CREATE CERTIFICATE <WITNESS_HostC_cert>
WITH SUBJECT = ‘<Witness_HostC certificate>’;
GO
–Create a mirroring endpoint for server instance by using the certificate
CREATE ENDPOINT Endpoint_Mirroring
STATE = STARTED
AS TCP (
LISTENER_PORT=5024
, LISTENER_IP = ALL
)
FOR DATABASE_MIRRORING (
AUTHENTICATION = CERTIFICATE <WITNESS_HostC_cert
, ENCRYPTION = REQUIRED ALGORITHM RC4
, ROLE = ALL
);
GO
  1. On the witness server, back up the certificate.

–Back up the HOST_C certificate
BACKUP CERTIFICATE <WITNESS_HostC_cert> TO FILE = ‘<c:\ WITNESS_HostC_cert.cer>’;
GO
  1. By using any secure copy method, copy the backup certificate file (C:\WITNESS_HOSTC_cert.cer, for example) to the principal server and the mirror server.
  2. On the witness server, create logins and users for the principal and mirror servers, associate the certificates with the users, and grant the logins connect permissions for the partnership.

–Create a login on witness HOST_C for principal HOST_A
USE master;
CREATE LOGIN <MASTER_HostA_login> WITH PASSWORD = ‘<test1234->’;
GO
–Create a user for that login.
CREATE USER <MASTER_HostA_user> FOR LOGIN <MASTER_HostA_login>;
GO
–Associate the certificate with the user
CREATE CERTIFICATE <MASTER_HostA_cert>
AUTHORIZATION <MASTER_HostA_user>
FROM FILE = ‘<c:\MASTER_HostA_cert.cer>’ –do not use a network path, SQL Server will give an error about the key not being valid
GO
–Grant CONNECT permission on the login for the remote mirroring endpoint.
GRANT CONNECT ON ENDPOINT::Endpoint_Mirroring TO [<MASTER_HostA_login>];
GO
–Create a login for the mirror Host_B
CREATE LOGIN <HOST_HostB_login> WITH PASSWORD = ‘<1234-test>’;
GO
–Create a user for that login.
CREATE USER <HOST_HostB_user> FOR LOGIN <HOST_HostB_login>;
GO
–Associate the certificate with the user
CREATE CERTIFICATE <HOST_HostB_cert>
AUTHORIZATION <HOST_HostB_user>
FROM FILE = ‘<c:\HOST_HostB_cert.cer>’ –do not use a network path, SQL Server will give an error about the key not being valid
GO
–Grant CONNECT permission on the login for the remote mirroring endpoint.
GRANT CONNECT ON ENDPOINT::Endpoint_Mirroring TO [<HOST_HostB_login>];
GO
  1. On the principal server, create a login and user for the witness server, associate the certificate with the user, and grant the login connect permissions for the partnership. Repeat for the mirror server.

–Create a login on master HostA for witness HostC
USE master;
CREATE LOGIN <WITNESS_HostC_login> WITH PASSWORD = ‘<1234test->’;
GO
–Create a user for that login.
CREATE USER <WITNESS_HostC_user> FOR LOGIN <WITNESS_HostC_login>;
GO
–Associate the certificate with the user
CREATE CERTIFICATE <WITNESS_HostC_cert>
AUTHORIZATION <WITNESS_HostC_user>
FROM FILE = ‘<c:\WITNESS_HostC_cert.cer>’ –do not use a network path, SQL Server will give an error about the key not being valid
GO
–Grant CONNECT permission on the login for the remote mirroring endpoint.
GRANT CONNECT ON ENDPOINT::Endpoint_Mirroring TO [<WITNESS_HostC_login>];
GO
  1. On the principal server, attach the witness server. This example uses the configuration database. Repeat for all databases.

–Set up the witness server
ALTER DATABASE SharePoint_Config
SET WITNESS =
‘<TCP://databasewitness.adatum.com:5024>’
GO
Posted on by escapebusinesssolutions in Uncategorized


 

Getting started with Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010

Posted on by escapebusinesssolutions in Uncategorized

  1. Run the Microsoft SharePoint Products Preparation Tool, which installs all required prerequisites to use SharePoint Foundation 2010.
  2. Run Setup, which installs binaries, configures security permissions, and sets registry settings for Microsoft SharePoint Foundation.
  3. Run SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard, which installs and configures the configuration database, the content database, and installs the SharePoint Central Administration Web site.
  4. Configure browser settings.
  5. Run the Farm Configuration Wizard, which configures the farm, creates the first site collection, and selects the services that you want to use in the farm.
  6. Perform post-installation steps.

 


Important:

To complete the following procedures, you must be a member of the Administrators group on the local computer.

 

Run the Microsoft SharePoint Products Preparation Tool

Use the following procedure to install software prerequisites for SharePoint Foundation 2010.

To run the Microsoft SharePoint Products Preparation Tool

  1. Insert your SharePoint Foundation 2010 installation disc.
  2. On the SharePoint Foundation 2010 Start page, click Install software prerequisites.


Note:

Because the preparation tool downloads components from the Microsoft Download Center, you must have Internet access on the computer on which you are installing Microsoft SharePoint Foundation.
  1. On the Welcome to the Microsoft SharePoint Products Preparation Tool page, click Next.
  2. On the License Terms for software product page, review the terms, select the I accept the terms of the License Agreement(s) check box, and then click Next.
  3. On the Installation Complete page, click Finish.

 

Run Setup

The following procedure installs binaries, configures security permissions, and sets registry settings for SharePoint Foundation 2010.

To run Setup

  1. On the SharePoint Foundation 2010 Start page, click Install SharePoint Foundation.
  2. On the Read the Microsoft Software License Terms page, review the terms, select the I accept the terms of this agreement check box, and then click Continue.
  3. On the Choose the installation you want page, click Server farm.
  4. On the Server Type tab, click Complete.
  5. Optional: To install SharePoint Foundation 2010 at a custom location, click the Data Location tab, and then either type the location or click Browse to find the location.
  6. Click Install Now.
  7. When Setup finishes, click Close.

 


Note:

If Setup fails, check the TEMP folder of the user who ran Setup. Ensure that you are logged in as the user who ran Setup, and then type %temp% in the location bar in Windows Explorer. If the path %temp% resolves to a location that ends in a “1” or “2”, you will need to navigate up one level to view the log files. The log file name is Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Setup (<timestamp>).

 


Tip:

To access the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard, click Start, point to All Programs, and then click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products. If the User Account Control dialog box appears, click Continue.

 

Run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard

The following procedure installs and configures the configuration database, the content database, and installs the SharePoint Central Administration Web site.

To run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard

  1. On the Welcome to SharePoint Products page, click Next.
  2. In the dialog box that notifies you that some services might need to be restarted during configuration, click Yes.
  3. On the Connect to a server farm page, click Create a new server farm, and then click Next.
  4. On the Specify Configuration Database Settings page, do the following:
    1. In the Database server box, type the name of the computer that is running SQL Server.
    2. In the Database name box, type a name for your configuration database, or use the default database name. The default name is SharePoint_Config.
    3. In the Username box, type the user name of the server farm account. Ensure that you type the user name in the format DOMAIN\user name.


Important:

The server farm account is used to create and access your configuration database. It also acts as the application pool identity account for the SharePoint Central Administration application pool, and it is the account under which the Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Workflow Timer service runs. The SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard adds this account to the SQL Server Login accounts, the SQL Server dbcreator server role, and the SQL Server securityadmin server role. The user account that you specify as the service account must be a domain user account, but it does not need to be a member of any specific security group on your front-end Web servers or your database servers. We recommend that you follow the principle of least privilege and specify a user account that is not a member of the Administrators group on your front-end Web servers or your database servers.
  1. In the Password box, type the user password.
  1. Click Next.
  2. On the Specify Farm Security Settings page, type a passphrase, and then click Next.

    Ensure that the passphrase meets the following criteria:

  • Contains at least eight characters
  • Contains at least three of the following four character groups:
    • English uppercase characters (from A through Z)
    • English lowercase characters (from a through z)
    • Numerals (from 0 through 9)
    • Nonalphabetic characters (such as !, $, #, %)


Note:

Although a passphrase is similar to a password, it is usually longer to enhance security. It is used to encrypt credentials of accounts that are registered in Microsoft SharePoint Foundation; for example, the Microsoft SharePoint Foundation system account that you provide when you run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard. Ensure that you remember the passphrase, because you must use it each time you add a server to the farm.
  1. On the Configure SharePoint Central Administration Web Application page, do the following:
    1. Either select the Specify port number check box and type the port number you want the SharePoint Central Administration Web application to use, or leave the Specify port number check box cleared if you want to use the default port number.
    2. Click either NTLM or Negotiate (Kerberos).
  2. Click Next.
  3. On the Completing the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard page, review your configuration settings to verify that they are correct, and then click Next.


Note:

If you want to automatically create unique accounts for users in Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), click Advanced Settings, and enable Active Directory account creation.
  1. On the Configuration Successful page, click Finish.


Note:

If the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard fails, check the PSCDiagnostics log files, which are located on the drive on which SharePoint Foundation is installed, in the %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\LOGS folder.


Note:

If you are prompted for your user name and password, you might need to add the SharePoint Central Administration Web site to the list of trusted sites and configure user authentication settings in Internet Explorer. You might also want to disable the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security settings. Instructions for how to configure or disable these settings are provided in the following section.


Note:

If you see a proxy server error message, you might need to configure your proxy server settings so that local addresses bypass the proxy server. Instructions for configuring proxy server settings are provided later in the following section.

 

Configure browser settings

After you run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard, you should ensure that SharePoint Foundation 2010 works properly for local administrators in your environment by configuring additional settings in Internet Explorer.

 


Note:

If local administrators are not using Internet Explorer, you might need to configure additional settings. For information about supported browsers, see Plan browser support (SharePoint Foundation 2010).

 

If you are prompted for your user name and password, perform the following procedures:

  • Add the SharePoint Central Administration Web site to the list of trusted sites
  • Disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security settings

If you receive a proxy server error message, perform the following procedure:

  • Configure proxy server settings to bypass the proxy server for local addresses

For more information, see Getting Started with IEAK 8 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=151359&clcid=0x409).

 

To add the SharePoint Central Administration Web site to the list of trusted sites

  1. In Internet Explorer, on the Tools menu, click Internet Options.
  2. On the Security tab, in the Select a zone to view or change security settings area, click Trusted Sites, and then click Sites.
  3. Clear the Require server verification (https:) for all sites in this zone check box.
  4. In the Add this Web site to the zone box, type the URL to your site, and then click Add.
  5. Click Close to close the Trusted Sites dialog box.
  6. Click OK to close the Internet Options dialog box.

 

To disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security settings

  1. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Server Manager.
  2. In Server Manager, select the root of Server Manager.
  3. In the Security Information section, click Configure IE ESC.

    The Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration dialog box opens.

  4. In the Administrators section, click Off to disable the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security settings, and then click OK.

 

To configure proxy server settings to bypass the proxy server for local addresses

  1. In Internet Explorer, on the Tools menu, click Internet Options.
  2. On the Connections tab, in the Local Area Network (LAN) settings area, click LAN Settings.
  3. In the Automatic configuration area, clear the Automatically detect settings check box.
  4. In the Proxy Server area, select the Use a proxy server for your LAN check box.
  5. Type the address of the proxy server in the Address box.
  6. Type the port number of the proxy server in the Port box.
  7. Select the Bypass proxy server for local addresses check box.
  8. Click OK to close the Local Area Network (LAN) Settings dialog box.
  9. Click OK to close the Internet Options dialog box.

 

Run the Farm Configuration Wizard

You have now completed Setup and the initial configuration of SharePoint Foundation 2010. You have created the SharePoint Central Administration Web site.

You can now create your farm and sites, and you can select services by using the Farm Configuration Wizard.

To run the Farm Configuration Wizard

  1. On the SharePoint Central Administration Web site, on the Configuration Wizards page, click Launch the Farm Configuration Wizard.
  2. On the Help Make SharePoint Better page, click one of the following options, and then click OK:
  • Yes, I am willing to participate (Recommended.)
  • No, I don’t want to participate.
  1. On the Configure your SharePoint farm page, click Walk me through the settings using this wizard, and then click Next.
  2. In the Service Account section, click a service account that you want to use to configure your services.


Note:

For security reasons, we recommend that you use a different account from the farm administrator account to configure services in the farm.

If you decide to use an existing managed account — that is, an account that SharePoint Foundation is aware of — ensure that you click that option before you continue.
  1. Select the services that you want to use in the farm, and then click Next.
  1. On the Create Site Collection page, do the following:
    1. In the Title and Description section, in the Title box, type the name of your new site.
    2. Optional: In the Description box, type a description of what the site contains.
    3. In the Web Site Address section, select a URL path for the site.
    4. In the Template Selection section, in the Select a template list, select the template that you want to use for the top-level site in the site collection.


Note:

To view a template or a description of a template, click any template in the Select a template list.
  1. Click OK.
  2. On the Configure your SharePoint farm page, review the summary of the farm configuration, and then click Finish.
  1. Run the Microsoft SharePoint Products Preparation Tool, which installs all prerequisites to use SharePoint Foundation 2010.
  2. Run Setup, which installs SQL Server 2008 Express and the SharePoint product.
  3. Run SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard, which installs the SharePoint Central Administration Web site and creates your first SharePoint site collection.
  4. Configure browser settings.
  5. Perform post-installation steps.


Important:

To complete the following procedures, you must be a member of the Administrators group on the local computer.

 

Run the Microsoft SharePoint Products Preparation Tool

Use the following procedure to install software prerequisites for SharePoint Foundation 2010.

To run the Microsoft SharePoint Products Preparation Tool

  1. Insert your SharePoint Foundation 2010 installation disc.
  2. On the SharePoint Foundation 2010 Start page, click Install software prerequisites.


Note:

Because the preparation tool downloads components from the Microsoft Download Center, you must have Internet access on the computer on which you are installing SharePoint Foundation.
  1. On the Welcome to the Microsoft SharePoint Products Preparation Tool page, click Next.
  2. On the Installation Complete page, click Finish.

Run Setup

The following procedure installs SQL Server 2008 Express and the SharePoint product. At the end of Setup, you can choose to start the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard, which is described later in this section.

To run Setup

  1. On the SharePoint Foundation 2010 Start page, click Install SharePoint Foundation.
  2. On the Read the Microsoft Software License Terms page, review the terms, select the I accept the terms of this agreement check box, and then click Continue.
  3. On the Choose the installation you want page, click Standalone.
  4. When Setup finishes, a dialog box prompts you to complete the configuration of your server. Ensure that the Run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard now check box is selected.
  5. Click Close to start the configuration wizard.

 


Note:

If Setup fails, check the TEMP folder of the user who ran Setup. Ensure that you are logged in as the user who ran Setup, and then type %temp% in the location bar in Windows Explorer. If the path %temp% resolves to a location that ends in a “1” or “2”, you will need to navigate up one level to view the log files. The log file name is Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Setup (<timestamp>).

 


Tip:

To access the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard, click Start, point to All Programs, and then click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products. If the User Account Control dialog box appears, click Continue.

 

Run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard

The following procedure installs and configures the configuration database, the content database, and installs the SharePoint Central Administration Web site. It also creates your first SharePoint site collection.

To run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard

  1. On the Welcome to SharePoint Products page, click Next.
  2. In the dialog box that notifies you that some services might need to be restarted during configuration, click Yes.
  3. On the Configuration Successful page, click Finish.


Note:

If the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard fails, check the PSCDiagnostics log files, which are located on the drive on which SharePoint Foundation is installed, in the %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\LOGS folder.


Note:

If you are prompted for your user name and password, you might need to add the SharePoint Central Administration Web site to the list of trusted sites and configure user authentication settings in Internet Explorer. You might also want to disable the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security settings. Instructions for how to configure or disable these settings are provided in the following section.


Note:

If you see a proxy server error message, you might need to configure your proxy server settings so that local addresses bypass the proxy server. Instructions for configuring proxy server settings are provided later in the following section.

 

Configure browser settings

After you run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard, you should ensure that SharePoint Foundation works properly for local administrators in your environment by configuring additional settings in Internet Explorer.

 


Note:

If local administrators are not using Internet Explorer, you might need to configure additional settings. For information about supported browsers, see Plan browser support (SharePoint Foundation 2010).

 

If you are prompted for your user name and password, perform the following procedures:

  • Add the SharePoint Central Administration Web site to the list of trusted sites
  • Disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security settings

If you receive a proxy server error message, perform the following procedure:

  • Configure proxy server settings to bypass the proxy server for local addresses

For more information, see Getting Started with IEAK 8 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=151359&clcid=0x409).

 

To add the SharePoint Central Administration Web site to the list of trusted sites

  1. In Internet Explorer, on the Tools menu, click Internet Options.
  2. On the Security tab, in the Select a zone to view or change security settings area, click Trusted Sites, and then click Sites.
  3. Clear the Require server verification (https:) for all sites in this zone check box.
  4. In the Add this Web site to the zone box, type the URL to your site, and then click Add.
  5. Click Close to close the Trusted Sites dialog box.
  6. Click OK to close the Internet Options dialog box.

    If you are using a proxy server in your organization, use the following steps to configure Internet Explorer to bypass the proxy server for local addresses.

 

To disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security settings

  1. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Server Manager.
  2. In Server Manager, select the root of Server Manager.
  3. In the Security Information section, click Configure IE ESC.

    The Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration dialog box opens.

  4. In the Administrators section, click Off to disable the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security settings, and then click OK.

 

To configure proxy server settings to bypass the proxy server for local addresses

  1. In Internet Explorer, on the Tools menu, click Internet Options.
  2. On the Connections tab, in the Local Area Network (LAN) settings area, click LAN Settings.
  3. In the Automatic configuration area, clear the Automatically detect settings check box.
  4. In the Proxy Server area, select the Use a proxy server for your LAN check box.
  5. Type the address of the proxy server in the Address box.
  6. Type the port number of the proxy server in the Port box.
  7. Select the Bypass proxy server for local addresses check box.
  8. Click OK to close the Local Area Network (LAN) Settings dialog box.
  9. Click OK to close the Internet Options dialog box.

Windows IT Pro Best Practices for Protecting Your Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V Based Infrastructures

Posted on by escapebusinesssolutions in Uncategorized

 
Windows IT Pro

Best Practices for

Protecting Your Windows

Server 2012 and Hyper-V

Based Infrastructures
sponsored by

Tech Advisor • Symantec | p. 2

Many administrators remember the challenges of architecting a
backup solution for their datacenter, ensuring all the right data
was protected and finding solutions to files that were open
during backup processes. The Virtual Shadow Copy Service (VSS)
completely changed how Windows operating systems were
backed up. Application vendors can now create components
(VSS writers) that the VSS backup framework could call, allowing
an application to flush all transactions and data to disk, thus
ensuring a backup that would be usable in a restore scenario by
having all application data on disk in a consistent state.

Looking at a datacenter today and that of 10 years ago demonstrates
the shift in how IT datacenters are architected. Organizations
have moved from one operating system per server to many
operating systems per server, which is achieved through server
virtualization. Windows Server 2012 provides many new features,
including a new version of Hyper-V. The new hypervisor has seen
large increases in its scalability, allowing for virtual machines
with 64 virtual processors, a terabyte of memory, and virtual hard
disks that are 64 terabytes in size. Additional new features include
virtual fibre channel, SMB 3.0 support allowing virtual machines
to be stored on SMB file shares, and shared nothing live migration
that allow virtual machines to be migrated between hosts that
are not clustered or that share storage with no downtime. The
new scalability and functionality means systems that were previously
not virtualized due to limitations in virtualization are now
capable of being virtualized. The percentage of virtual operating
systems will increase and very large, critical systems will now be
virtualized, making the backup of the virtualization environment
even more important.

The adoption of virtualization adds a new dimension to your organization’s
backup plans and this paper will walk through some
key considerations when hosting services on Windows Server
2012 Hyper-V.

The importance of backups, even in a
virtual environment

Virtualization offers a number of very useful features related to
the state of a virtual machine that can sometimes seem to reduce
the need for backups; however, this is not the case. Likewise
many services offer replication capabilities that are also not
replacements for solid backup processes.

Snapshots are a common feature of virtualization platforms,
including Hyper-V, that allow a point-in-time view of a virtual
machine to be taken. If a virtual machine is running when a
snapshot is taken its current storage content is saved and its
memory and device state is stored. While snapshots provide a
point-in-time copy of a virtual machine the operating system
within the virtual machine is unaware that a snapshot has been
taken, which means data on disk may not be in a consistent state
because the VSS backup framework is not utilized. Additionally,
when a snapshot is applied to a virtual machine it restores a virtual
machine to that point in time and the OS has no knowledge
that its state has been changed back in time. This may cause serious
problem for certain types of service and can cause security
and data problems. Typically, snapshots should be avoided in any
production environment; they are best utilized in development
environments where it can be very useful as part of testing or
troubleshooting to be able to revert an operating system to a
known state repeatedly.

Hyper-V also provides a feature called Hyper-V Replica, which is
an asynchronous replication of storage changes of enabled virtual
machines every five minutes to an alternate Hyper-V server in
a separate location. The goal of this feature is to provide disaster
recovery capability for organizations using inbox capabilities
without the need for separate storage replication technologies.
The typical Hyper-V Replica operation works by sending the content
of the Hyper-V Replica log file, which contains the changes
to the storage over the previous five minutes, to the alternate
Hyper-V server, which then merges the changes into its copy of
the virtual hard disks. Like a snapshot, Hyper-V Replica is not typically
notifying the operating system of the storage replication,
making the data on disk possibly inconsistent. Hyper-V Replica
does offer the capability to initiate a VSS request to the virtual
machine periodically, which forces data to be flushed to disk,
making that specific Hyper-V Replica application data consistent.
However, this feature is in no way designed to be a backup solution
and requires a completely separate Hyper-V server for the
continuous receiving of five-minute storage deltas.

Both snapshots and Hyper-V Replica only work with virtual hard
disks, which means if applications are storing data using pass-
through storage or on storage accessed via iSCSI or virtual fibre
channel, then the data is not backed up. Even more importantly

both snapshots and Hyper-V Replica are only aware at the operating
system level rather than understanding specific applications
and data groups within the virtual machine, which would
severely limit the granularity of restoration.

Where to perform backups

Traditionally, a backup is performed via a backup agent running
on the operating system being backed up. The backup agent
communicates to a central backup service, sending the data to
be protected. For operating systems that are virtualized this approach
can still be used; however, there is another option.

For Hyper-V supported guest operating systems (Windows Server
2003 and above), integration services are provided that enhance
the functionality and performance of the operating systems running
within the virtual machines. Once installed the integration
services add a number of specific capabilities between the operating
system running in the virtual machine and the Hyper-V host.
One of these integrations is “Backup (volume snapshot),” which allows
the Hyper-V host to notify the guest operating system within
the virtual machine when a backup it taken of the virtual machine
at the Hyper-V host. The guest operating system then calls all the
registered VSS writers within the virtual machine, which causes all
the applications to flush information to disk and then notifies the
Hyper-V host that the virtual machines virtual hard disks can be
backed up, thus ensuring an app-consistent backup.

Remember that the granularity of what you are protecting and,
therefore, what can be restored is the most important factor.
When a backup agent is running within the virtual machine on
the guest OS it has direct interaction with registered VSS writers
and knowledge of applications running within the operating
system. This enables the backup to be configured to backup
specific units of application data; for example, for a database
server specific databases could be protected; for a mail server,
specific mailboxes. When the backup is application aware the
restore can equally be application aware, offering application-
specific restoration. If, however, the virtual machine was backed
up at the Hyper-V host level—although the VSS writers in the
virtual machine are still called to ensure the data on disk is in a
consistent state—the data being backed up is the entire virtual
machine, which means at restoration time the only thing that
could be restored is the entire virtual machine or perhaps files
from the associated hard disks. This would mean that backing
up within the virtual machine would be the best option where
application-aware backups are required. However, some backup
solutions on the market take the backup pass-through capability
native to Hyper-V to another functional level by also exposing
application awareness from the virtual machines. This means that
even though backups are taken at the Hyper-V host level, the
backups can still be configured to back up particular application
data and restore at application data unit levels.

Another aspect of the virtual machine’s data must be considered
when performing backups: the actual location of the virtual
machine configuration and virtual hard disks. In basic scenarios
the virtual hard disks and configuration files for virtual machines
are stored on direct-attached storage. However, for environments
that leverage clusters of Hyper-V hosts or that wish to use consolidated
storage, then storage local to a host is not optimal and
shared storage must be used.

Windows Server 2008 R2 introduced Cluster Shared Volumes
(CSV,) which allow an NTFS formatted LUN on a SAN to be concurrently
accessed by all hosts in a cluster. This removed previous
problems associated with dismounting and mounting LUNs
when a virtual machine is migrated between hosts. A special process
is required to back up CSV-enabled volumes, which means
it’s critical that your backup solution has CSV support. Windows
Server 2012 provides improvements to CSV processes by labelling
CSV volumes as CSVFS instead of NTFS, making them easy to
identify. In addition, backups of CSV volumes no longer have to
be performed on a specific member of the cluster, known as the
coordinator node. In Windows Server 2012 volume-level backup
of a CSV can be performed from any node connecting to the CSV
and backups do not interfere with running virtual machines.

Another new shared storage option for Windows Server 2012
Hyper-V virtual machines is to use a Server Message Block (SMB)
3.0 file share. This file share can be hosted on a Windows Server
2012 file server or cluster or a storage appliance with SMB 3.0
support. Windows Server 2012 includes a new “File Server VSS
Agent Service,” which must be enabled on all servers acting as
SMB 3.0 servers for Hyper-V. This enables remote VSS backups
to be performed. This is a very new feature so very few backup
solutions have support for remote VSS SMB backups at the time

of writing. However, talk to your backup vendor to ascertain their
plans and timing for SMB 3.0 support. If your organization wishes
to leverage SMB 3.0 prior to support from the backup solution,
one option is to run the backup agent within the virtual machine
to ensure protection of the operating systems and applications.

What to back up

With all the different components in a virtualized datacenter and
the replication capabilities of many services it can often seem
confusing to decide which operating system instances and which
copies of data should be backed up. Often there is no absolute
right or wrong answer, but there are certain must haves—and
generally you can’t back up too much. It’s better to have
redundant backups of the same data than to miss data.

As previously discussed it’s critical that all data in the organization is
backed up, even if it’s also replicated because backup and
replication meet different needs. But if a data set is replicated three
times is it necessary to back up all three copies? For example,
Exchange has the concept of Database Availability Groups (DAG)
where mailbox databases are stored on multiple servers. The
general rule to follow is to make sure all unique data is backed up
by at least one backup process, which means if a database is
replicated between three services make sure at least one of them is
backed up. The same applies to domain controllers within the
same domain. Typically, domain controllers are highly replaceable
so if a domain controller has a problem another one can be
provisioned in its place very quickly. But it’s important there is a
backup of the Active Directory routinely on at least one, and ideally
two, domain controllers. Care must be taken to ensure that backup
is not lost as databases are moved between different servers and
there is a risk if backups are not running on all servers that a data
set falls out of scope of a backup. As a side note if certain copies are
not backed up its important to ensure there are no negative
effects, such as log files never being truncated or deleted which
normally occurs as part of a backup.

It’s important to back up the operating systems and the
application installs that utilize application data because often it
can be very time consuming to perform an installation of a server
application. Thus restoring the server operating system and the
installed application is the most expedient recovery possible.
Ensure any servers that are required for the primary workload
being backed up are also backed up and recoverable. For
example, a service may have requirements on Active Directory,
on DNS or another server running a middleware service. Make
sure all these systems are backed up to provide protection in a
disaster situation where whole racks of servers or even entire
datacenters are lost.

For the Hyper-V host backup it is important in the event of a server
failure that the virtual machines are not affected, so always use
clusters of Hyper-V hosts which enable virtual machines to move
between hosts. It’s critical to replace failed hosts quickly to restore
resiliency from further failure. Performing backups of Hyper-V hosts
provides a very efficient way of restoring this protection.

When considering the backup of the Hyper-V host and virtual
machines from the host do not back up the same guest
operating system twice. If backups are being performed within
the virtual machine via a backup agent installed on the guest
operating system inside the virtual machine, do not also back up
the virtual machine from the Hyper-V host. This leads to wasted
space and possible conflicts.

Putting it all together

Given how critical backups are to every environment one aspect
that is often overlooked in a process that often backs up to disk is
ensuring protection of the backup itself. While backing up to
disks local to the datacenter provides great performance and very
fast restores it leaves the backup vulnerable to the same disaster
scenarios that could affect the protected servers themselves.
Therefore, always ensure backups are also stored offsite (e.g., to a
second location via disk replication, to a repository on tape, or
replicated to public cloud-based storage).

Additionally, ensure backup and restore processes are frequently
tested and revised. Performing regular test recoveries helps
ensure in the event the backup is really needed it contains the
required information and can be used as desired. Any time a new
system is added to the environment ensure backup and restore
processes are updated accordingly to include the new system
and any systems it is dependent upon.

By following these basic guidelines you can help ensure that your data
and your organization are well protected in the most efficient way.

Unleashing the Ideavirus

Posted on by escapebusinesssolutions in Uncategorized

Unleashing the Ideavirus 1 http://www.ideavirus.com

Unleashing the Ideavirus

By Seth Godin

Foreword by Malcolm Gladwell

©2000 by Do You Zoom, Inc.

You have permission to post this, email this, print this and pass it along for free to

anyone you like, as long as you make no changes or edits to its contents or digital

format. In fact, I’d love it if you’d make lots and lots of copies. The right to bind this

and sell it as a book, however, is strictly reserved. While we’re at it, I’d like to keep

the movie rights too. Unless you can get Paul Newman to play me.

Ideavirus™ is a trademark of Do You Zoom, Inc. So is ideavirus.com™.

Designed by Red Maxwell

You can find this entire manifesto, along with slides and notes and other good stuff, at

http://www.ideavirus.com.

This version of the manifesto is current until September 17, 2000. After that date, please go

to http://www.ideavirus.com and get an updated version. You can buy this in book form on

September 1, 2000.

This book is dedicated to Alan Webber and Jerry Colonna. Of course.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 2 http://www.ideavirus.com

STEAL THIS IDEA!

Here’s what you can do to spread the word about Unleashing the Ideavirus:

1. Send this file to a friend (it’s sort of big, so ask first).

2. Send them a link to http://www.ideavirus.com so they can download it themselves.

3. Visit http://www.fastcompany.com/ideavirus to read the Fast Company article.

4. Buy a copy of the hardcover book at

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0970309902/permissionmarket.

5. Print out as many copies as you like.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 3 http://www.ideavirus.com

Look for the acknowledgments at the end. This is, after all, a new digital format, and you want to get right to it!

The #1 question people ask me after reading

Permission Marketing:

ÒSo, how do we get attention to ask for

permission in the first place?”

This manifesto is the answer to that question.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 4 http://www.ideavirus.com

Foreword

The notion that an idea can become contagious, in precisely the same way that a virus does,

is at once common-sensical and deeply counter-intuitive. It is common-sensical because all of

us have seen it happen: all of us have had a hit song lodged in our heads, or run out to buy a

book, or become infected with a particular idea without really knowing why. It is counterintuitive,

though, because it doesn’t fit with the marketer’s traditional vision of the world.

Advertisers spent the better part of the 20th century trying to control and measure and

manipulate the spread of information—to count the number of eyes and ears that they could

reach with a single message. But this notion says that the most successful ideas are those that

spread and grow because of the customer’s relationship to other customers—not the

marketer’s to the customer.

For years, this contradiction lay unresolved at the heart of American marketing. No longer.

Seth Godin has set out to apply our intuitive understanding of the contagious power of

information—of what he so aptly calls the ideavirus—to the art of successful

communication. “Unleashing the Ideavirus” is a book of powerful and practical advice for

businesses.

But more than that, it is a subversive book. It says that the marketer is not—and ought not

to be—at the center of successful marketing. The customer should be. Are you ready for that?

Malcolm Gladwell

Author

The Tipping Point

http://www.gladwell.com

Unleashing the Ideavirus 5 http://www.ideavirus.com

Introduction

If you don’t have time to read the whole book, here’s what it says:

Marketing by interrupting people isn’t cost-effective anymore. You

can’t afford to seek out people and send them unwanted marketing

messages, in large groups, and hope that some will send you money.

Instead, the future belongs to marketers who establish a foundation

and process where interested people can market to each other. Ignite

consumer networks and then get out of the way and let them talk.

If you’re looking for mindblowing new ideas, you won’t find them in this, or any other

marketing book. Guerrilla marketing, 1:1 marketing, permission marketing—these ideas are

not really new, but they are thoughtful constructs that let you figure out how to do

marketing better. The fact is, if we built factories as badly as we create advertising campaigns,

the country would be in a shambles. This book will help you better understand the timehonored

marketing tradition of the ideavirus, and help you launch your own.

Questions the book answers:

1.

Why is it foolish to launch a new business with millions of dollars in TV ads?

2.

Are the market leaders in every industry more vulnerable to sudden successes by the

competition than ever before?

3.

Should book publishers issue the paperback edition of a book before the hardcover?

4.

What’s the single most important asset a company can create—and what is the simple

thing that can kill it?

5.

Every ad needs to do one of two things to succeed…yet most ads do neither. What’s the

right strategy?

6.

Does the Net create a dynamic that fundamentally changes the way everything is

marketed?

7.

How can every business…big and small…use ideavirus marketing to succeed?

Unleashing the Ideavirus 6 http://www.ideavirus.com

Foreword……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….5

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………6

SECTION 1: Why Ideas Matter…………………………………………………………………………………… 11

Farms, Factories And Idea Merchants ………………………………………………………………………………….12

Why Are Ideaviruses So Important?…………………………………………………………………………………….21

And Five Things Ideaviruses Have In Common……………………………………………………………………….22

Seven Ways An Ideavirus Can Help You: ……………………………………………………………………………… 23

The Sad Decline of Interruption Marketing ………………………………………………………………………….. 24

We Live In A Winner-Take-Almost-All World………………………………………………………………………….. 25

The Traffic Imperative: Why Sites Fail ……………………………………………………………………………….. 28

We Used To Make Food. We Used To Make Stuff. Now We Make Ideas…………………………………………. 30

People Are More Connected Than They Ever Were Before. We Have Dramatically More Friends Of Friends

And We Can Connect With Them Faster And More Frequently Than Ever……………………………………….31

ThereÕs A Tremendous Hunger To Understand The New And To Remain On The Cutting Edge……………34

While Early Adopters (The Nerds Who Always Want To Know About The Cool New Thing In Their Field)

Have Always Existed, Now WeÕve Got More Nerds Than Ever Before. If YouÕre Reading This, YouÕre A

Nerd!………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 35

Ideas Are More Than Just Essays And Books. Everything From New Technology To New Ways Of Creating

To New Products Are Winning Because Of Intelligent Ideavirus Management By Their Creators………..36

The End Of The Zero Sum Game ………………………………………………………………………………………… 37

SECTION 2: How To Unleash An Ideavirus…………………………………………………………………..39

While It May Appear Accidental, ItÕs Possible To Dramatically Increase The Chances Your Ideavirus Will

Catch On And Spread. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………..40

The Heart Of The Ideavirus: Sneezers ………………………………………………………………………………….41

Sneezers Are So Important, We Need To Subdivide Them………………………………………………………… 42

The Art Of The Promiscuous …………………………………………………………………………………………….. 47

ItÕs More Than Just Word Of Mouth ……………………………………………………………………………………..51

An Ideavirus Adores A Vacuum …………………………………………………………………………………………. 52

Unleashing the Ideavirus 7 http://www.ideavirus.com

Once It Does Spread, An Ideavirus Follows A Lifecycle. Ignore The Lifecycle And The Ideavirus Dies Out.

Feed It Properly And You Can Ride It For A Long Time…………………………………………………………….54

Viral Marketing Is An Ideavirus, But Not All Ideaviruses Are Viral Marketing ……………………………….. 55

What Does It Take To Build And Spread An Ideavirus? ……………………………………………………………. 57

There Are Three Key Levers That Determine How Your Ideavirus Will Spread:………………………………60

Ten Questions Ideavirus Marketers Want Answered ………………………………………………………………. 64

Five Ways To Unleash An Ideavirus ……………………………………………………………………………………. 65

SECTION THREE: The Ideavirus Formula ……………………………………………………………………. 78

Managing Digitally-Augmented Word Of Mouth……………………………………………………………………… 79

Tweak The Formula And Make It Work …………………………………………………………………………………80

Advanced Riffs On The Eight Variables You Can Tweak In Building Your Virus………………………………. 85

Hive …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 88

Velocity………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 92

Vector………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 94

Medium ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 96

SMOOTHNESS: It Would All Be Easy If We Had Gorgons……………………………………………………………. 98

Persistence …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………100

Amplifier …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….102

SECTION 4: Case Studies and Riffs…………………………………………………………………………..104

The Vindigo Case Study…………………………………………………………………………………………………..105

Saving The World With An Ideavirus ………………………………………………………………………………….. 107

Moving Private To Public…………………………………………………………………………………………………..111

YouÕre In The Fashion Business! ………………………………………………………………………………………..113

The Money Paradox ………………………………………………………………………………………………………..117

Think Like A Music Executive (Sometimes)…………………………………………………………………………..119

Is That Your Final Answer?……………………………………………………………………………………………….121

A Dozen ideaviruses Worth Thinking About…………………………………………………………………………. 123

Why I Love Bestseller Lists………………………………………………………………………………………………124

How A Parody Of Star Wars Outsold Star Wars …………………………………………………………………….. 127

Unleashing the Ideavirus 8 http://www.ideavirus.com

Wassup? ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..129

Judging a book by its cover ……………………………………………………………………………………………..131

Being The Most ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 133

In Defense Of World Domination ………………………………………………………………………………………. 135

If YouÕre A Member Of The Academy, You Go To Movies For Free …………………………………………….. 137

How An Ideavirus Can Drive The Stock Market …………………………………………………………………….. 139

Bumper Sticker Marketing……………………………………………………………………………………………….142

No, You Go First! ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 143

Digital Media Wants to Be Free…………………………………………………………………………………………145

Van Gogh Lost His Ear To Prove A Point ……………………………………………………………………………..148

Answering InaÕs Question………………………………………………………………………………………………..150

Crossing The Chasm With An Ideavirus ……………………………………………………………………………….152

The Myth Of The Tipping Point ………………………………………………………………………………………….156

The Compounding Effect …………………………………………………………………………………………………158

Bill GatesÕ Biggest Nightmare…………………………………………………………………………………………..160

Hey, Skinny!…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………164

Get Big Fast? The Mistake So Many Companies MakeÉ…………………………………………………………..165

The Heart Of Viral Marketing……………………………………………………………………………………………168

The Great Advertising Paradox………………………………………………………………………………………….171

Permission: The Missing Ingredient…………………………………………………………………………………… 174

How A Virus And Permission Team Up To Find Aliens…………………………………………………………….. 176

The Art of Creating an Ideavirus………………………………………………………………………………………. 177

Is He Really More Evil Than Satan Himself? ………………………………………………………………………… 178

Case Study: Why Digimarc Is Going To Fail…………………………………………………………………………..179

Why Are These Cows Laughing?…………………………………………………………………………………………181

Never Drink Alone …………………………………………………………………………………………………………183

The Power Of Parody ……………………………………………………………………………………………………..185

Bee Stings And The Measles …………………………………………………………………………………………….186

But IsnÕt It Obvious?………………………………………………………………………………………………………187

Unleashing the Ideavirus 9 http://www.ideavirus.com

Your CompanyÕs Worst Enemy ………………………………………………………………………………………….189

Step By Step, Ideavirus Tactics: ……………………………………………………………………………………….192

The Future Of The Ideavirus: What Happens When Everyone Does It? ………………………………………..194

Acknowledgments ………………………………………………………………………………………………..196

Unleashing the Ideavirus 10 http://www.ideavirus.com

SECTION 1: Why Ideas Matter

STEAL THIS IDEA!

Here’s what you can do to spread the word about Unleashing the Ideavirus:

1. Send this file to a friend (it’s sort of big, so ask first).

2. Send them a link to http://www.ideavirus.com so they can download it themselves.

3. Visit http://www.fastcompany.com/ideavirus to read the Fast Company article.

4. Buy a copy of the hardcover book at

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0970309902/permissionmarket.

5. Print out as many copies as you like.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 11 http://www.ideavirus.com

Farms, Factories And Idea Merchants

Imagine for a second that you’re at your business school reunion, trading lies and bragging

about how successful you are and are about to become. Frank the jock talks about the dotcom

company he just started. Suzie the ex-banker is now focusing her energy on rebuilding

Eastern Europe. And then the group looks at you. With a wry look of amusement, you

answer:

“Well, the future—the really big money—is in owning a farm. A small one, maybe 100

acres. I intend to invest in a tractor of course, and expect that in just a few years my husband

and I can cash out and buy ourselves a nice little brownstone in the city.”

Ludicrous, no? While owning a farm may bring tremendous lifestyle benefits, it hasn’t been a

ticket to wealth for, say, 200 years.

What about owning a factory then? Perhaps the road to riches in the new economy would be

to buy yourself a hot-stamping press and start turning out steel widgets. Get the UAW to

organize your small, dedicated staff of craftsmen and you’re on your way to robber-baron

status.

Most of us can agree that the big money went out of owning a factory about thirty years ago.

When you’ve got high fixed costs and you’re competing against other folks who also know

how to produce both quantity and quality, unseemly profits fly right out the window.

Fact is, the first 100 years of our country’s history were about who could build the biggest,

most efficient farm. And the second century focused on the race to build factories. Welcome

to the third century, folks. The third century is about ideas.

Alas, nobody has a clue how to build a farm for ideas, or even a factory for ideas. We

recognize that ideas are driving the economy, ideas are making people rich and most

important, ideas are changing the world. Even though we’re clueless about how to best

organize the production of ideas, one thing is clear: if you can get people to accept and

Unleashing the Ideavirus 12 http://www.ideavirus.com

embrace and adore and cherish your ideas, you win. You win financially, you gain power and

you change the world in which we live.

So how do you win? What do you need to do to change the status quo of whatever industry

you’re in, or, if you’re lucky, to change the world?

If you’re a farmer, you want nothing more than a high price for your soybeans. If you’re a

manufacturer of consumer goods, you want a display at the cash register at Wal-Mart. But

what if you’re an idea merchant?

The holy grail for anyone who trafficks in ideas is this: to unleash an ideavirus.

An idea that just sits there is worthless. But an idea that moves and grows and infects

everyone it touches… that’s an ideavirus.

In the old days, there was a limit on how many people you could feed with the corn from

your farm or the widgets from your factory. But ideas not only replicate easily and well, they

get more powerful and more valuable as you deliver them to more people.

How does an ideavirus manifest itself? Where does it live? What does it look like? It’s useful

to think of ideas of every sort as being similar. I call them manifestos. An idea manifesto is a

powerful, logical “essay” that assembles a bunch of existing ideas and creates a new one.

Sometimes a manifesto is a written essay. But it can be an image, a song, a cool product or

process… the medium doesn’t matter. The message does. By lumping all sorts of

ideas—regardless of format—into the same category (manifestos) it’s much easier to think of

them as versions of the same thing. As long as you can use your manifesto to change the way

people think, talk or act… you can create value.

Definition: MEDIUM In order to move, an idea has to be encapsulated in a medium. It

could be a picture, a phrase, a written article, a movie, even a mathematical formula (e=mc2).

The Medium used for transmitting the ideavirus determines how smooth it is as well as the

velocity of its growth. A medium is not a manifesto—every idea is a manifesto, trying to

make its point, and the medium is the substance that the idea lives in.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 13 http://www.ideavirus.com

Not only is this an essay about ideas and ideaviruses…it’s also a manifesto striving to become

an ideavirus! If this manifesto changes your mind about marketing and ideas, maybe you’ll

share it with a friend. Or two. Or with your entire company. If that happens, this idea will

become an ideavirus, and spread and gain in value.

We live in a world where consumers actively resist marketing. So it’s imperative to stop

marketing at people. The idea is to create an environment where consumers will market to

each other.

Is an ideavirus a form of marketing? Sure it is. And today, marketing is all there is. You don’t

win with better shipping or manufacturing or accounts payable. You win with better

marketing, because marketing is about spreading ideas, and ideas are all you’ve got left to

compete with.

The future belongs to the people who unleash ideaviruses.

What’s an ideavirus? It’s a big idea that runs amok across the target audience. It’s a

fashionable idea that propagates through a section of the population, teaching and changing

and influencing everyone it touches. And in our rapidly/instantly changing world, the art

and science of building, launching and profiting from ideaviruses is the next frontier.

Have you ever heard of Hotmail? Ever used it? If so, it’s not because Hotmail ran a lot of TV

ads (they didn’t). It’s because the manifesto of free email got to you. It turned into an

ideavirus. Someone you know and trust infected you with it. What about a Polaroid

camera… was your first exposure (no pun intended!) in a TV ad, or did you discover it when

a friend showed you how cool the idea of an instant photograph was?

Sometimes it seems like everyone is watching the same TV show as you, or reading the same

book, or talking about the same movie or website. How does that happen? It usually occurs

because the idea spreads on its own, through an accidental ideavirus, not because the

company behind the product spent a ton of money advertising it or a lot of time

Unleashing the Ideavirus 14 http://www.ideavirus.com

orchestrating a virus. And how the idea spreads, and how to make it spread faster—that’s the

idea behind unleashing an ideavirus.

Word of mouth is not new—it’s just different now. There were always ideaviruses—gossip or

ideas or politics that spread like wildfire from person to person. Without running an ad or

buying a billboard, Galileo managed to upset all of Pisa with his ideas. Today, though,

ideaviruses are more important and more powerful than ever. Ideaviruses are easier to launch

and more effective. Ideaviruses are critical because they’re fast, and speed wins and speed

kills—brands and products just don’t have the time to develop the old way. Ideaviruses give

us increasing returns—word of mouth dies out, but ideaviruses get bigger. And finally,

ideaviruses are the currency of the future. While ideaviruses aren’t new, they’re important

because we’re obsessed with the new, and an ideavirus is always about the new.

Remember the slogan, “Only her hairdresser knows for sure?” That was classic brand

marketing, and it flew in the face of word of mouth. It was an ad for a product that was

supposed to be a secret—a secret between you, your hairdresser and Clairol.

A few years later, Herbal Essence took a totally different tack… they tried to encourage you

to tell your friends. But while word of mouth works great among the people who use a

product and their immediate friends—if I love your story or hate your service, I’ll tell a few

friends—it dies out fast. There’s no chance a friend of a friend is going to tell you about my

horrible experience on United Airlines or how much I loved flying on Southwest. Word of

mouth fades out after a few exchanges.

But now, aided by the Net and abetted by the incredible clutter in our universe, ideaviruses

are spreading like wildfire. We’re all obsessed with ideas because ideas, not products, are the

engine of our new economy.

I wore Converse sneakers growing up… so did you. But the shareholders of Converse never

profited from the idea of the shoe—they profited from the manufacture of a decent sneaker.

If two sneakers were for sale, you bought the cheaper one.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 15 http://www.ideavirus.com

It took Converse generations to build a brand and years to amortize a factory and they were

quite happy to extract a modest profit from every pair of sneakers sold, because Converse

knew their factory would be around tomorrow and the day after that. So sneakers, like

everything else, were priced by how much they cost, and sold one pair at a time by earnest

shoe salesmen who cared about things like how well the shoes fit.

Converse could take their time. They were in this for the long haul. Those days are long

gone. Twenty years later, it’s the idea of Air Jordan sneakers, not the shoe, that permits Nike

to sell them for more than $100. It’s the sizzle, not the fit. The idea makes Nike outsized

profits. And Nike knows that idea won’t last long, so they better hurry—they need another

ideavirus, fast.

In the old days, we used to sneer at this and call it a fad. Today, everything from presidential

politics to music to dentistry is driven by fads—and success belongs to marketers who

embrace this fact.

Source: Forrester Research

It took 40 years for radio to have ten million users. By then, an industry had grown that

could profit from the mass audience. It took 15 years for TV to have ten million users. It

Unleashing the Ideavirus 16 http://www.ideavirus.com

only took 3 years for Netscape to get to 10 million, and it took Hotmail and Napster less

than a year. By aggregating mass audiences to themselves (and not having to share them with

an entire industry), companies like Netscape and Hotmail are able to realize huge profits,

seemingly overnight. And they do it by spreading ideaviruses.

Ideas can now be carried in the ether. Because the medium for carrying ideas is fast and

cheap, ideas move faster and cheaper! Whether it’s the image of the new VW Beetle (how

long did it take for the idea of that car to find a place in your brain?) or the words of a new

Stephen King novel (more than 600,000 people read it in the first week it was available

online), the time it takes for an idea to circulate is approaching zero.

Why should we care? Why does it matter that ideas can instantly cross international

boundaries, change discussions about politics, crime and justice or even get us to buy

something? Because the currency of our future is ideas, and the ideavirus mechanism is the

way those ideas propagate. And the science and art of creating ideaviruses and using them for

profit is new and powerful. You don’t have to wait for an ideavirus to happen organically or

accidentally. You can plan for it and optimize for it and make it happen.

Sure, some ideaviruses are organic. They happen and spread through no overt action or

intent on the part of the person who creates them (the Macarena wasn’t an organized plot…

it just happened). Others, though, are the intentional acts of smart entrepreneurs and

politicians who know that launching and nurturing an ideavirus can help them accomplish

their goals.

In the old days, the way we sold a product was through interruption marketing. We’d run

ads, interrupt people with unanticipated, impersonal, irrelevant ads and hope that they’d buy

something. And sometimes, it worked.

The advantage of this branding strategy is that the marketer is in complete and total control.

The disadvantage is that it’s hard and expensive. Every time a catalog clothier (Land’s End,

Eddie Bauer, you name it) wants to sign up a new customer, they need to buy a few hundred

stamps, send out some carefully designed catalogs and hope that one person sends them

money.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 17 http://www.ideavirus.com

What marketers are searching for is a way to circumvent the tyranny of cost-per-thousand

interruptions. They need something that ignites, a way to tap into the invisible currents that

run between and among consumers, and they need to help those currents move in better,

faster, more profitable ways. Instead of always talking to consumers, they have to help

consumers talk to each other.

A beautifully executed commercial on the Super Bowl is an extraordinarily risky bet.

Building a flashy and snazzy website is almost certain to lead to failure. Hiring a celebrity

spokesperson might work on occasion, but more often than not, it won’t break through the

clutter. Whenever advertisers build their business around the strategy of talking directly to

the customer, they become slaves to the math of interruption marketing.

In traditional interruption marketing, the marketer talks directly to as many consumers as possible, with no

intermediary other than the media company. The goal of the consumer is to avoid hearing from the advertiser. The

goal of the marketer is to spend money buying ads that interrupt people who don’t want to be talked to!

Unleashing the Ideavirus 18 http://www.ideavirus.com

In creating an ideavirus, the advertiser creates an environment in which the idea can replicate and spread. It’s the

virus that does the work, not the marketer.

Fortunately, there are already proven techniques you can use to identify, launch and profit

from ideas that can be turned into viruses. There’s a right and a wrong way to create them,

and more important, the care and feeding of your ideavirus can dramatically affect its

potency.

One of the key elements in launching an ideavirus is concentrating the message. If just 1% or

even 15% of a group is excited about your idea, it’s not enough. You only win when you

totally dominate and amaze the group you’ve targeted. That’s why focusing obsessively on a

geographic or demographic or psychographic group is a common trait among successful idea

merchants.

Why are new companies launching on the Net so obsessed with traffic and visitors? Why is a

company like GeoCities sold for more than $2 billion, when it has close to zero revenue and

interesting, but by no means unique, software?

Because infecting large populations with the ideavirus is the first step to building a profitable

business model. The key steps for Internet companies looking to build a virus are:

Unleashing the Ideavirus 19 http://www.ideavirus.com

1.

Create a noteworthy online experience that’s either totally new or makes the user’s life

much better. Or make an offline experience better/faster/cheaper so that switching is

worth the hassle.

2.

Have the idea behind your online experience go viral, bringing you a large chunk of the

group you’re targeting WITHOUT having to spend a fortune advertising the new

service.

3.

Fill the vacuum in the marketplace with YOUR version of the idea, so that competitors

now have a very difficult time of unteaching your virus and starting their own.

4.

Achieve “lock in” by creating larger and larger costs to switching from your service to

someone else’s.

5.

Get permission from users to maintain an ongoing dialogue so you can turn the original

attention into a beneficial experience for users and an ongoing profit stream for you.

6.

Continue creating noteworthy online experiences to further spread new viruses, starting

with your core audience of raving fans.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 20 http://www.ideavirus.com

Why Are Ideaviruses So Important?

1.

We live in a winner-take-almost-all world. (Zipf’s law.)

2.

We used to focus on making food. We used to make stuff. Now we make ideas.

3.

People are more connected than ever. Not only are we more aware that our friends have

friends but we can connect with them faster and more frequently.

4.

There’s a tremendous hunger to understand the new and to remain on the cutting edge.

5.

While early adopters (the nerds who always want to know about the cool new thing in

their field) have always existed, now we’ve got more nerds than ever. If you’re reading this,

you’re a nerd!

6.

The profit from creating and owning an ideavirus is huge.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 21 http://www.ideavirus.com

And Five Things Ideaviruses Have In Common

1.

The most successful ideaviruses sometimes appear to be accidents, but it is possible to

dramatically increase the chances your ideavirus will catch on and spread.

2.

An ideavirus adores a vacuum. (This is a big idea. Read on to see what I mean).

3.

Once an ideavirus spreads, it follows a lifecycle. Ignore the lifecycle and the ideavirus dies

out. Feed it properly and you can extend its useful life and profit from it for a long time.

4.

Ideaviruses are more than just essays and books. Everything from new technology to new

ways of creating new products are winning because of intelligent seeding by their

creators.

5.

Viral marketing is a special case of an ideavirus. Viral marketing is an ideavirus in which

the carrier of the virus IS the product.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 22 http://www.ideavirus.com

Seven Ways An Ideavirus Can Help You:

1.

When everyone in town tells ten friends about your amazing ice cream

shop and a line forms out the door (supercharged word of mouth due to

the virus having dominated the town so completely).

2.

When your company’s new mass storage format catches on and it

becomes the next Zip drive.

3.

When an influential sports writer names your daughter as a high school

All-American basketball player and coaches line up outside the door

with scholarships.

4.

When Steve Jobs commissions the iMac, which spreads the word about

the Mac faster than any advertising ever could, raising market share and

saving your favorite computer company from bankruptcy.

5.

When you write a report for your boss about how your company should

deal with an opportunity in Cuba and it gets passed on, from person to

person, throughout the company, making you a hero and a genius.

6.

When the demo recording you made becomes a bestseller on MP3.com

and you get a call from Sony, who wants to give you a recording

contract.

7.

When you are able to devise a brand-new Internet business plan for a

product that’s useful and also embodies viral marketing…growing from

nothing to a million users in a month and making you rich along the

way.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 23 http://www.ideavirus.com

The Sad Decline of Interruption Marketing

When I first starting writing about Permission Marketing about four years ago, much of

what I said was considered heresy. “What do you mean TV ads are going to decline in

effectiveness?” “How dare you say anything negative about banner ads—of course they

work!” or “Direct mail has never been healthier!”

History, fortunately for me, has borne out my cries of doom and gloom about interruption

marketing. The TV networks are diversifying away from their traditional network TV

business as fast as they can. Banner clickthrough rates are down 85% or more. Ads are

sprouting up on the floors of the supermarket, in the elevator of the Hilton hotel in Chicago

and even in urinals. And everywhere you look, unanticipated, impersonal and irrelevant ads

are getting more expensive and less effective.

There’s a crisis in interruption marketing and it’s going to get much worse. It took more

than thirty pages to build the case against this wasteful, costly ($220 billion a year)

outmoded expense in Permission Marketing, so I’ll only spend a page on it here. If you want

to read the entire jeremiad, send a note to free@permission.com and I’ll send it to you for

free.

Unless you find a more cost-effective way to get your message out, your business is doomed.

You can no longer survive by interrupting strangers with a message they don’t want to hear,

about a product they’ve never heard of, using methods that annoy them. Consumers have

too little time and too much power to stand for this any longer.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 24 http://www.ideavirus.com

We Live In A Winner-Take-Almost-All World

Quick! Name an oil painting hanging in a museum somewhere in the world.

Did you say, “the Mona Lisa”?

As I walk through the Louvre, arguably one of the top ten most packed-with-high-qualitypaintings

museums on the planet, I pass one empty room after another, then come to an

alcove packed with people. Why? Why are these people clawing all over each other in order

to see a painting poorly displayed behind many inches of bullet-proof glass?

The reason the Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in the world is

that something had to be the most famous painting in the world and it

might as well be the Mona Lisa.

Busy people don’t have time to look at every painting. They only have

room in their overcrowded, media-hyped brains for a few paintings.

And when you come right down to it, most people would like to see only the “celebrity”

paintings. And just as there can only be one “My most favorite famous actress” (Julia

Roberts) and one “this site equals the Internet” (Yahoo!), there’s only room for one “most

famous painting in the world” and the safe choice is the Mona Lisa.

There’s a name for this effect. It’s called Zipf’s law, after George Kingsley Zipf (1902-1950),

a philologist and professor at Harvard University. He discovered that the most popular word

in the English language (“the”) is used ten times more than the tenth most popular word,

100 times more than the 100th most popular word and 1,000 times more than the 1,000th

most popular word.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 25 http://www.ideavirus.com

It’s also been discovered that this same effect applies to market share for software, soft drinks,

automobiles, candy bars, and the frequency of hits on pages found on a website. The chart

above shows actual visits to the different pages at Sun’s website.

In almost every field of endeavor, it’s clear that being #1 is a lot better than being #3 or #10.

There isn’t an even distribution of rewards, especially in our networked world.

On the Net, the stakes are even larger. The market capitalization of Priceline, eBay and

Amazon approaches 95% of the total market capitalization of every other consumer ecommerce

stock combined. Clearly, there’s a lot to be gained by winning.

An ideavirus lets you make something like this happen to your idea, to your business, to your

product. While the benefits of being #1 for a public Internet stock or an oil painting are

clear, it’s just as important to small businesses and individuals.

Ideaviruses are faced with a brickwall filter. In electronics, a brickwall filter wipes out certain

frequencies and lets the rest through. There’s no room for second place or extra

effort—either you’re in or you’re out. Ideaviruses are win/lose propositions. Either the

velocity and smoothness are high enough that it becomes a bonafide epidemic, or they’re not

and it dies out. Either your ideavirus works or it doesn’t. Smart propagators know when to

quit if their ideavirus isn’t getting through the filter.

Definition: VELOCITY

The velocity is a measure of how fast the idea spreads from

one party to another. If an idea is going to hit ten people before it gets to me, the multiplier

effect is large indeed—fast steps lead to more people being infected before it dies out.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 26 http://www.ideavirus.com

Definition: SMOOTHNESS SMOOTHNESS

How easy is it for an end user to spread this particular

ideavirus? Can I click one button or mention some magic phrase, or do I have to go through

hoops and risk embarrassment to tell someone about it?

For example, it’s pretty easy to talk about your hairdresser. Someone tells you you’ve got a

great haircut, and you say, “Yeah, I went to Bob at Bumble & Bumble.” On the other hand,

spreading the word about your reflexology therapist is pretty tricky. You’re not sure when to

bring it up, and you really don’t have words to describe it.

The smoothest viruses, like Hotmail, spread themselves. Just the act of using the product

spreads the virus. There’s an obvious relationship between smoothness and catchiness. A

product that’s easy to recommend is often a product that’s easy to get hooked on.

Eric Raymond was a little known programmer when he wrote an essay called “The Cathedral

and the Bazaar.” It was a manifesto—an essay designed to become an ideavirus—arguing

why the open source approach to coding (creating stuff like Linux) made sense. But instead

of having a magazine or a book publisher bring it to market, he posted the essay online, in

text, postscript and audio form. And he gave it away for free.

Within months, tens of thousands of people had read it. Months after that, Raymond

published this essay with some of his other free essays in a book. That book became an

“instant” bestseller. Of course, it wasn’t instant at all. He had laid the foundation long

before, by building an ideavirus.

So, what has creating an ideavirus done for Raymond’s value? Let’s take a crass look at his

financial situation: The virus led to increased demand for his services as a programmer (he

can pick his jobs if he likes), as a consultant, and even as a public speaker. The last I saw, he

had just written an essay about what it was like to make a fortune during an IPO!

Unleashing the Ideavirus 27 http://www.ideavirus.com

The Traffic Imperative: Why Sites Fail

A site without traffic doesn’t exist.

According to Forrester Research, only 20% of 50 leading online retailers expect to turn a

profit this year. Just 18% more expect to be profitable next year. It’s becoming increasingly

obvious that many of these sites will never turn a profit, and that they’re hoping to last long

enough to be acquired or sell their stock.

A recent McKinsey and Co. study found that the vast majority of online retailers are not

only unprofitable, they’re actually losing money on every sale. Without even computing the

cost of advertising and clicks, these sites have discounted their prices so significantly that the

contribution margin from each sale is negative. The average online drugstore, for example,

loses $16.42 on each and every sale, before computing the cost of traffic.

Why? Many of these sites are confusing low prices with an effective customer acquisition

tool. There’s probably no way that’s less effective and more costly than cutting your prices to

the point where you lose money on each sale (for Amazon naysayers—they actually make a

profit of about $5 on the average book order).

Add to this mess the obscene cost of customer acquisition—estimated by the Boston

Consulting Group to be more than $80 a visitor (that’s for visitors, not even customers) for

most online merchants. Now you can see the huge hurdle these sites are going to have to

cross in order to be profitable.

This problem isn’t unique to the online world, of course. When I was enrolled at Tufts

University in 1980, there were two homemade ice cream stores within two miles of campus.

One was Joey’s, which made a terrific product (they used Hydrox cookies instead of Oreos,

by the way, so you could avoid the animal fat if you wanted) and there was never, ever a line.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 28 http://www.ideavirus.com

In the other direction was the now famous Steve’s Ice Cream. His prices were a bit higher

than Joey’s, but his profits were clearly much higher. Why? Because there was always a line at

Steve’s. A long line. Sometimes you’d wait an hour to get an ice cream cone.

What happened? Why did one ice cream shop go viral and the other languished at the edge

of profitability? It certainly wasn’t about advertising, because neither shop did any. The

reason Steve Herrell’s shop did so well is that it was famous for having a line! People brought

folks from out of town to have the experience. Locals came back because they’d convinced

themselves that if the hive liked it enough to wait an hour for an ice cream cone, well, it

must be worth it. Suddenly, it wasn’t about the ice cream. It was about the experience.

Most online merchants, being risk averse copycats afraid to innovate, are guaranteeing that

there will be no ideavirus created around their businesses. By paying millions to AOL and

Yahoo! for “traffic,” they’re investing in exactly the wrong sort of buzz. The

alternative—focusing on people who can promote your site, affiliate programs, unique

promotions and building wow, zing and magic into the site—is just too much work for most

sites.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 29 http://www.ideavirus.com

We Used To Make Food. We Used To Make Stuff. Now We Make Ideas.

Here are some astonishing facts you should think about long and hard on your way to work

tomorrow:

Twenty years ago, the top 100 companies in the Fortune 500 either dug something out of

the ground or turned a natural resource (iron ore or oil) into something you could hold.

Today, fewer than half of the companies on the list do that. The rest make unseemly profits

by trafficking in ideas.

In 1998, there were 30,000 new musical CDs published, including one from the Pope (his,

which I like a lot, features a little rap, a little techno and a lot of worldbeats).

Ninety-nine percent of Yahoo’s market capitalization is due to brand, sizzle, user loyalty and

other “soft” ideas. Only 1% of the company’s value is due to actual unique stuff that you

can’t get anywhere else.

Nathan Mhyrvold, former chief scientist at Microsoft, says a great programmer is worth

10,000 times more than an average one. Why? Because of the quality of her ideas.

The important takeaway is this: Ideas aren’t a sideshow that make our factory a little more

valuable. Our factory is a sideshow that makes our ideas a little more valuable!

Unleashing the Ideavirus 30 http://www.ideavirus.com

People Are More Connected Than They Ever Were Before. We Have

Dramatically More Friends Of Friends And We Can Connect With Them Faster

And More Frequently Than Ever.

Think back. Really far. Ten years ago.

How many people did you have regular telephone contact with ten years ago? Probably ten

or twenty or thirty in your personal life, and maybe 100 at work?

Now, take a look at your email inbox and your ICQ (the most popular instant messenger

program) buddy list. How many people do you hear from every week?

We’re far more connected than we ever were. And now, we’ve got second or third or fourth

order connections. There’s an email in my box from someone who is married to someone I

went to summer camp with twenty years ago who got my email address from a third friend.

Another message is from a former employee, telling me about a doctor who’s about to lose

his license for trying radical medical treatments, and how her mother-in-law will suffer if this

guy can’t practice any longer.

It’s hard for me to imagine either person contacting me if they had to walk across the village

and bang on the door of my hut or pick up the phone and call me. But the moment you

connect to the Internet, you connect, at some level, to all of us. And the connections make

ideas travel. Fast.

What’s the difference between word of mouth and an ideavirus? Two differences. First, word

of mouth tends to spread slower, be more analog. If you like a book, you might tell a friend

or two. And then your friends are unlikely to tell someone else until they read it for

themselves.

Second, word of mouth dies off. Because the numbers are smaller, it doesn’t take many

people who don’t participate in the word of mouth for each generation to be smaller than the

one before it.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 31 http://www.ideavirus.com

Here’s a schematic of typical word of mouth. Notice how few cycles there are, and how it drops off

over time.

Here’s an ideal ideavirus. Note how much more frequently the cycles occur, and how each cycle sees

the virus grow.

With an ideavirus, both principles no longer apply. Ideaviruses spread fast and they spread

far. With word of mouse (word of mouth augmented by the power of online

communication), you can tell 100 friends, or a thousand friends. Because the numbers are

larger and faster, the virus grows instead of slows.

Even before the Net, there were special cases of viruses. In traditional word of mouth in the

book business, someone reads a book and tells a friend. It’s nice, but it’s not usually enough.

The Bridges of Madison County, however, became the bestselling novel of the decade, because

booksellers adopted it and told people. As a bookseller, you’ve got exposure not just to a few

people, but hundreds of people. So the serendipitous word of mouth that helps some books

is replaced by a rapid, virulent alternative.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 32 http://www.ideavirus.com

On the other hand, most Americans have never had a massage from a professional masseuse.

Why? Because in order to understand the power of a massage, you have to get one. We don’t

currently have the word or picture tools to adequately describe the positive benefits of a

massage, and just as important, there isn’t a powerful spokesperson for massage who has

spent the time and energy to develop the ideavirus. There’s no real medium to transmit the

message. So the message travels slowly. So there is no virus around the idea of a massage.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 33 http://www.ideavirus.com

ThereÕs A Tremendous Hunger To Understand The New And To Remain On The

Cutting Edge.

Jed Clampett discovered that finding oil on his property was a sure road to riches. Today, the

road seems to be paved with awareness. If you know what’s news, if you know what’s the

latest, hottest, most impactful new idea, it’s much easier to succeed. You can profit in the

stock market, do better in politics, find breakthroughs in science, or programming or

marketing.

Why does this matter? Because in a society where the new isn’t valued, your social standing

doesn’t increase when you become a nerd. And because ideaviruses are really nothing but

amplified gossip about new stuff, they can’t take root in a culture that doesn’t care about the

new.

Take a look at the Top 40 charts in Billboard magazine. Thirty or forty years ago, a record

could easily stay on the list for six months or more. Today, new records come and go much

faster. Why? Because we are happily saturated in the current hit, and then move on.

Last year, 1,778 business books were published in the U.S. alone. Every one of them got read

by someone, some by an awful lot of people. Why? Because as our world changes faster and

faster and faster, knowing is just as important as having. And that makes the population ready

and eager for the next ideavirus.

As the speed of new ideas entering the community has increased, so has our respect for

people who know. And because it’s valuable, we’re open to both hearing about the new and

telling others about it.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 34 http://www.ideavirus.com

While Early Adopters (The Nerds Who Always Want To Know About The Cool

New Thing In Their Field) Have Always Existed, Now WeÕve Got More Nerds

Than Ever Before. If YouÕre Reading This, YouÕre A Nerd!

The Internet turned us all into nerds. AltaVista isn’t cool any more—google.com is. Don’t

use the Palm, that’s passé. Try this Handspring instead. Suddenly we’re ready, willing and

able to be at the bleeding edge, all the time.

The profit from creating and owning an ideavirus is huge, huger than it ever was before. It

used to be that only a few stereotypical nerds cared about the latest pocket calculator. Today,

you’ll see people talking about their handheld computer on the subway. It used to be that

only a few people knew about the latest Salsa hit out of Mexico or the coolest new chef in

Los Angeles. Today, the roles are totally reversed. Your parents are nerds!

It’s not just that our society is rewarding people who are sensitive enough or smart enough or

cool enough to know about the next new thing. It’s that many of us have crossed over a line

and gone from being the vast majority who waited for something to become

mainstream—we’ve become the early adopters, the folks on the bleeding edge who actually

seek out innovation. The combined circulation of Wired, Fast Company and PC Magazine is

rapidly approaching the total circulation of Sports Illustrated.

Because the population has shifted, the sweet spot has shifted. Companies no longer make

most of their money harvesting money from the laggards who finally get around to buying

something at K-Mart. They make their money the first day, the first week, the first month an

idea is out there.

If something is new and different and exciting and getting buzzed about, we want to know

about it, be part of it. The fashion is now to be in fashion, and ideas are the way we keep up.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 35 http://www.ideavirus.com

Ideas Are More Than Just Essays And Books. Everything From New

Technology To New Ways Of Creating To New Products Are Winning Because

Of Intelligent Ideavirus Management By Their Creators.

A manifesto is a carefully organized series of ideas, designed to get someone to come around

to your point of view. But while one way to make a complicated argument is with a book,

you can just as easily (and sometimes more effectively) send it through a song (Bob Dylan

did this for Hurricane Carter) or with something as elegant as an OXO vegetable peeler.

When you first see the OXO, you instantly understand the idea behind it. You just know it

will work better and cut you less often. If you’ve ever peeled a vegetable, you want an OXO.

The design of the OXO is quite simply a manifesto that says, “There’s a smart, comfortable

way to do this annoying task.” Is the OXO going to get viral? Not across the general

population, of course, but if you hang out with a group of people who have arthritis or love

kitchen stuff, it already has. Just take a look at the glowing reviews of this peeler on

Amazon’s kitchen site.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 36 http://www.ideavirus.com

The End Of The Zero Sum Game

Traditional advertising is a game with winners and losers. If your product gets attention from

the targeted consumer, you win “mindshare” and your customer loses time. When a

consumer is foolish enough to listen to an irrelevant ad, she loses time and doesn’t even gain

useful information. It’s an old economy model in which every transaction has someone

taking something.

Permission marketing and the ideavirus are both very different from this model. These

models create a game in which everyone can win! If there’s a great idea, and it moves through

the hive for free, everyone who touches it wins in several ways.

First, you as the consumer win for recommending it to a friend. This increases your status as

a powerful sneezer (or your compensation as a promiscuous sneezer.) Because you respect

your peers, you’re not suggesting or pitching something that doesn’t make your friends’ lives

better. Violate this respect and your power as a sneezer goes way down.

Definition: SNEEZER Some people are more likely to tell their friends about a great new

idea. These people are at the heart of the ideavirus. Identifying and courting sneezers is a key

success factor for ideamerchants.

Second, the recipient benefits as well. He benefits from the way the idea changes his life, and

he benefits because he now has the ability to sneeze the idea to someone else, thus increasing

his power.

Third, the creator of the idea succeeds because her idea propagates and because she can sell

souvenirs (speeches, consulting, value-added services) to people who are now open and

receptive to her idea.

My friend, Chris Meyer, co-author of Blur, had this to say: “The one thing that distinguishes

effective sneezing campaigns from ineffective ones is RESPECT for the time, attention, and

reputation of the next guy to catch the virus. It’s important to note that the decision to

sneeze is, in general, a distributed one, made by each of us as to whether to clog our friend’s

Unleashing the Ideavirus 37 http://www.ideavirus.com

email or whatever with the virus in question, because our (local, at least) reputation is at

stake.”

This insight goes to the core of why ideaviruses are succeeding and why traditional marketers

don’t immediately grasp this approach (or permission marketing for that matter.) The

distributed nature of the decision is the antithesis of the command-and-control General

Patton approach that marketers have taken previously.

The reason that The Red Herring, The Industry Standard and other magazines are jammed

with ads is not because the ads always work. They don’t. The reason the ads are purchased is

that in exchange for money the marketer gets the illusion that they’re in charge of the

conversation, at least for a few seconds.

Bill Bernbach, the dean of American Advertising, was co-founder of DDB Advertising. He

died twenty years ago, but before he left us, he pointed the way to this “new” way of

marketing:

“You cannot sell a man who isn’t listening; word of mouth is the best

medium of all; and dullness won’t sell your product, but neither will

irrelevant brilliance.”

The answer, of course, is to give people a reason to listen and then create an infrastructure

that will amplify their ability to spread word of mouth. And core to both of those tasks is the

new respect that marketers need to show newly powerful consumers.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 38 http://www.ideavirus.com

SECTION 2: How To Unleash An Ideavirus

STEAL THIS IDEA!

Here’s what you can do to spread the word about Unleashing the Ideavirus:

1. Send this file to a friend (it’s sort of big, so ask first).

2. Send them a link to http://www.ideavirus.com so they can download it themselves.

3. Visit http://www.fastcompany.com/ideavirus to read the Fast Company article.

4. Buy a copy of the hardcover book at

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0970309902/permissionmarket.

5. Print out as many copies as you like.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 39 http://www.ideavirus.com

While It May Appear Accidental, ItÕs Possible To Dramatically Increase The

Chances Your Ideavirus Will Catch On And Spread.

This is the really cool part. Once you understand the fundamental elements behind the

propagation of an ideavirus, you can unleash your own.

Just because ideaviruses have usually spread through unknown means or accidental events

doesn’t mean that there isn’t a science to building and managing them.

You can invest in designing your product to make it virusworthy. Then if you understand

the eight elements of the ideavirus formula, you increase your chances of spreading your

ideavirus with every step along the way.

This can change the way you approach all of your marketing. If launching an ideavirus is the

most powerful thing you can do for a product and service, and there are steps you can take to

increase the likelihood that this will occur, you’ve got to try!

Unleashing the Ideavirus 40 http://www.ideavirus.com

The Heart Of The Ideavirus: Sneezers

SNEEZERS Some people are far more likely to spread an ideavirus than others. Malcolm

Gladwell (author of the brilliant book and ideavirus, The Tipping Point) calls this the Law of

the Few and breaks the key virus spreaders into three groups: Connectors, Mavens and

Salespeople. What’s critical in the analysis is understanding that some folks are dead ends,

while others will enable and amplify your ideavirus.

In his best example, Gladwell talks about the success of Paul Revere in warning us that the

British were coming. It turns out that a second man, William Dawes, went on a similar ride

the same night—but his was a total failure.

Why did Dawes fail where Revere succeeded? It’s because people knew Paul Revere. They

trusted him. He had credibility. And so when he said something, people were willing to

listen and believe. Revere was a sneezer. Dawes, a loner, tried hard but couldn’t get the idea

to become a virus.

Sneezers are at the core of any ideavirus. Sneezers are the ones who when they tell ten or

twenty or 100 people—people believe them.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 41 http://www.ideavirus.com

Sneezers Are So Important, We Need To Subdivide Them

There are two basic kinds of sneezers:

Promiscuous Sneezers

This is your uncle the insurance salesman. These are members of a hive who can be counted

on to try to “sell” their favorite ideavirus to almost anyone, almost any time.

1.

Promiscuous sneezers can be motivated by money or other inducements.

2.

Promiscuous sneezers are rarely held in high esteem as opinion leaders, but if they’re

promiscuous enough, they can be extremely effective.

DEFINITION: HIVE People are not one amorphous mass. We’re self-organized into

groups, or hives that have several things in common: a way to communicate among

ourselves; spoken or unspoken rules and standards; a common history; fashion leaders. Some

examples: Fraternity brothers at a college, orthodox Jews, readers of Fast Company,

Deadheads.

Many of the Net businesses that are now being organized around ideaviruses are targeting

this group (people who are willing to sell to their friends for personal gain). Companies like

Mercata, All Advantage and even Amazon are offering inducements to customers that

compensate them for spreading ideas to their friends and acquaintances in an attempt to

acquire new customers. As the value of creating ideaviruses increases, we’ll see more of this,

and we’ll also see more and more people becoming promiscous sneezers—basically, we’re

paying folks enough to corrupt them into spreading ideas in exchange for cash.

Powerful Sneezers

The hat business is near the end of an eighty-year downward spiral to total irrelevance. Each

year has brought worse news, with one manufacturer after another going out of business, and

most towns left with one (if they’re lucky) haberdasher.

In the midst of all this dismal news, about twenty years ago there was one bright spot.

Harrison Ford. With a bullwhip. Wearing a hat.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 42 http://www.ideavirus.com

Indiana Jones sold more hats for Stetson than any single person since the invention of the

Marlboro Man. Why? Because Ford has the influence to set style, because his appearance in a

movie wearing that hat coaxed millions of men who wanted to be like him into buying a hat.

The paradox of the powerful sneezer is that he can’t be bought. Every time a powerful

sneezer accepts a bribe in exchange for spreading a virus, his power decreases. When Bruce

Springsteen does ads in Japan, or Whoopi Goldberg shills for Flooz, they have less leverage as

powerful sneezers. The public knows that they can be motivated by more than just taste.

In fact, every time a powerful sneezer tries something new and introduces a new idea, she

takes a risk. If her followers reject the virus (for whatever reason), her ability to introduce

future viruses decreases. For this reason, it’s difficult to manipulate powerful sneezers, and

equally difficult to predict what might motivate them to adopt an ideavirus.

Here’s an analogy that demonstrates the difference between promiscuous sneezers and

powerful sneezers, and more important, explains how they might converge:

Anyone can buy an ad in the Pennysaver, or even write and insert a “special advertising

section” in some fancy magazine. The advantage of this kind of presentation, obviously, is

that it gives the marketer complete control over how the message appears and what it says.

Advertising is basically paid sneezing. And because the public realizes that that’s all it is, it

doesn’t have an awful lot of credibility. It still works, but it’s not as effective as real sneezing

from a powerful sneezer.

On the other hand, it’s up to the editor in chief of the New York Times to decide what

articles appear in the paper. No matter how much money a marketer spends (even though

spending a lot might get you noticed by the editorial staff), there’s no guarantee that an

article will appear—and no guarantee that if it does appear, it will say what you want it to

say.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 43 http://www.ideavirus.com

Enter the web. There are plenty of websites where the line between editorial content and

advertising is blurred, where sponsoring a website also gives you the right to say what you

want to say.…

So let’s imagine for a second that the New York Times embraced this shocking idea. That

they said, “Okay marketers, write your own articles! And pay us to run them!” Now there’d

be some ground rules. First, the marketer would specify how much they’d be willing to pay

to have a story featured. For example, a restaurant could decide it might be worth $10,000

for a feature on their new chef to appear in print.

Second, the Times would get final say over what was printed.

Obviously, a wholesale switch from powerful sneezer to promiscuous sneezer would decimate

the circulation base of the Times. If the Times accepted any article, regardless of credibility

and interest, just because the marketer was the highest bidder, it would totally destroy the

paper within a week.

But what if the Times realized that picking only the very best articles that were submitted

(maybe just a few a day) could ensure that people would still be delighted to read the paper?

What if the Times knew that for every 199 badly written restaurant fluff pieces, a great one

would show up? And what if the editor in chief had enough guts to pick just the great articles

and resist pressure to completely sell out?

Journalistic handwringing aside, this is already happening (not at the fabled Times, of

course), and it’s going to happen more. It’s happening on websites. It’s happening on

television (witness the CBS coverage of iWon.com awarding prizes—CBS owns a chunk of

iWon.) And far more interesting than this tortured analogy, it’s already happening with

people’s personal sneezing ethics.

A hundred years ago, there weren’t many opportunities for playwrights, actors and captains

of industry to sell out. Today, Whoopi Goldberg pitches Flooz, William Shatner pitches

Priceline and Gerald Ford is on the board of directors of several companies. In each case, the

celebrity is shifting from role of influential, powerful, can’t-be-bought-I’m-a-style-statesman

Unleashing the Ideavirus 44 http://www.ideavirus.com

to promiscuous sneezer, available for sale. William Shatner had lost his ability to set style

through his actions—he was past his prime as a powerful sneezer. So the segue to paid

sneezer made sense for his career. It would probably be a dumb move for Tom Cruise or Mel

Gibson, though.

After I left Yahoo!, I had many opportunities to serve on boards and do endorsements. I

chose not to. Why? Because I didn’t want to squander the powerful sneezing points I’d

earned by writing my last book. The one ad I did, I did for free. I’m still hearing about it.

Think about your own situation…. Have you ever signed up a friend for MCI’s Friends and

Family program? Or tried to get someone to use your Amazon affiliate links to buy books?

Or join with you to buy something at Mercata.com? In every case, you’re getting paid to

alter your behavior. That makes you more promiscuous and less powerful.

As the Net makes it easier to measure ideaviruses and motivate sneezers, we’re going to see

far more people become Promiscuous Sneezers, but, at the same time, the role of the

powerful sneezer will become ever more important. As available attention becomes ever more

precious, we’re going to be far more likely to listen to someone who’s spreading a virus for

non-personal gain.

Epinions.com is a fascinating model of the intersection between the powerful and the

promiscuous sneezers. Here’s a site where hundreds of thousands of people come to hear the

opinions of thousands of sneezers. Everything is reviewed, from books to dishwashers. And

the reviewers are clearly identified and constantly ranked. Promiscuous sneezers (who get

paid to do the reviews) suddenly become powerful! How? If a lot of people read and like

your reviews, your reviews carry more weight, regardless of your compensation scheme.

“Xyz” has posted more than 1,000 reviews and been read more than 100,000 times. She’s

compensated every time someone reads one of her reviews, so she certainly qualifies as

promiscous. She works hard to get others to read her reviews. But at the same time, she’s

developing a reputation as a powerful sneezer.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 45 http://www.ideavirus.com

Referrals.com is a business based around the idea of paying people to help with job searches.

Instead of just giving some headhunter the names of five friends who might be perfect for a

job (and having the headhunter collect a $30,000 fee if you’re right), referrals.com turns the

idea upside down. With their system, YOU send the job offer along to your friends, and if

they take the job, you get a check for $4,000.

If Referrals.com only attracts promiscuous sneezers, the business will fail. Why? Because the

very best people try hard not to listen to interruptions from promiscuous sneezers. The very

best people know that if someone can be bought, they’re not much more than a walking

billboard, and just as they ignore the billboards on the highway, they’re going to ignore the

most promiscuous sneezers in their midst. (Aside: If you’ve ever been called by a headhunter,

you know just how promiscuous people are willing to be in exchange for cash!)

Referrals.com is working very hard to turn powerful sneezers within very select, high-end

hives into people who, on occasion, are willing to sell out for a $4,000 payoff. These are folks

who might not hassle you just so they can make $5 or $10 in bonuses. But the idea of

becoming a headhunter and making $4,000 in exchange for sending a few emails is too

irresistible to pass up. This idea that even the powerful can become promiscuous for the right

inducement and in the right setting is a key building block to unleashing the ideavirus in an

organized way.

What a paradox. Powerful sneezers become less powerful when you buy them off. But

sometimes, promiscuous sneezers become powerful again when they get particularly

successful at it. It’s a cycle, with people switching off from one to another, always trying to

figure out how to be both promiscuous (read profitable) and powerful.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 46 http://www.ideavirus.com

The Art Of The Promiscuous

How do you attract and keep promiscuous sneezers? There are six key principles:

1. Make big promises

2. Show them how to make it up in volume

3. Describe an attainable path

4. When someone succeeds, tell the rest of them

5. Give the successful ones a way to show the non-sneezers it worked

6. Have a Mary Kay convention

Make big promises

One of the things that drives someone to become a promiscuous sneezer is the opportunity

for a change in lifestyle. Certain rewards, though small, are not as enticing as slightly less

certain rewards that are much larger. Human nature (especially among the optimists) will

give you the benefit of the doubt on the risks, but it won’t cut you any slack on the rewards.

So, I’m much more likely to help you out for a chance to get free dry cleaning for six months

than I am to get a certain reward of $4 off my next dry cleaning bill.

Show them how to make it up in volume

Of course, the promise has to be believable. One of the best ways to do that is to make it

clear to the promiscuous sneezer that the system can be gamed. That if they work the system,

the odds of winning go way up.

If I look at the offer you make and say, “Wait. If I go to ten friends, not just one, then I’m a

lock to win this great prize…” you’ve done it right. I may think I’m scamming you by going

to so many people to adjust the odds in my favor, but actually, I’m doing just what you

wanted me to do—and then some.

Many of the online affiliate programs work this way. These programs offer a commission for

referrals that result in a sale. First designed as a cheap way to get new customers referred from

relevant web sites, they’ve evolved into something far bigger. If you’re at an online pet store,

Unleashing the Ideavirus 47 http://www.ideavirus.com

for example, and you see a link to a book about training dogs, you can click on the link and

buy it from Amazon.com. Amazon then sends the affiliate (the online pet store) a

commission. Small businesspeople have looked at these programs and said “Wait! If I build a

site that does nothing but sell books and Barnes and Noble does all the work, I’ll scam the

system and make a ton of money.” Of course, the online bookstore doesn’t care a wit about

where the customers come from. They’re just happy to have them. In essence, hundreds of

thousands of entrepreneurs are now building businesses dedicated to finding customers for

other merchants.

Describe an attainable path

Alas, trust is in short supply, even among optimistic promiscuous sneezers. Thus you’ve got

to make it clear to potential sneezers that there is in fact a way for them to profit from this

adventure.

This is especially true for offers where you don’t have a lot of time to make your case. By

showing the sneezer how smooth the system is, by making it trivially easy to forward that

email or whisper to that friend, you’re far more likely to get their initial enthusiasm. The first

few sneezes are the most difficult to get an individual to perform.

When someone succeeds, tell the rest of them

This is so important and so overlooked. I’m presuming that you’ve gained permission to talk

with your sneezers on an ongoing basis. So now talk to them! I’m a member of several online

affiliate programs, but not one of them does this. Why not send announcements detailing

how the most effective affiliates are doing? Why not invite me to visit their sites and see them

in action? By making it really clear that some sneezers are happily profiting, you dramatically

increase the chances you’ll get better performance from the rest of your sneezers.

Give the successful ones a way to show the non-sneezers it worked

Mary Kay cosmetics gives its best salespeople a pink Cadillac. This is no accident.

There are plenty of ways to pay off a promiscuous sneezer. Why do it with a pink Cadillac?

Because it is a persistent amplifier of this sneezer’s success. Because it attracts new sneezers to

Unleashing the Ideavirus 48 http://www.ideavirus.com

the fold. Because it’s proof to the rest of your organization and to the world that you can get

rich by selling cosmetics to your friends.

Have a sales convention

Just because it’s a new century doesn’t mean we should abandon the idea of getting together

in real life. Zig Ziglar tells the story of how Mary Kay went to a sales convention when she

was a struggling salesperson. She didn’t even have enough money to eat the meals there…

she brought her own crackers and cheese. But at the final banquet, when the salespeople

queued up to shake the company president’s hand, Mary Kay looked at him and said, “Next

year, I’ll be back as the #1 salesperson.” The president, who could have easily brushed off the

claim, stopped what he was doing, paused for a full thirty seconds, looked her in the eye and

said, “Yes, yes, I believe you will.”

And the rest is sales history. But without the convention, I seriously doubt this would have

occurred. How can you get together with your best promiscuous sneezers?

In addition to these six principles, there are two things you can do to totally and completely

wreck your network of promiscuous sneezers:

1. Change the rules in the middle

2. View the relationship as an expense

Don’t change the rules in the middle

Alladvantage.com is one of the fastest growing websites on the planet. The idea was to create

a multi-level marketing organization where each member would get paid for the ads they saw

and, more importantly, for the ads seen by the people they recruited. This led to a classic

MLM (multi-level marketing) network marketing business, where people made more money

bringing in new salespeople than they did actually using the product.

After growing to more than five million registered users, the company took a look at the

numbers and realized that the path to profitability was going to be hampered by the high

rates they were paying. So, well within the fine print they had published when they first

started, they changed the rates.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 49 http://www.ideavirus.com

All hell broke loose. The very best sneezers started sneezing against the company. The growth

rate hiccupped. Bad news. They’ll survive, and they might even continue their record

growth. But far better to have run the numbers in advance and had a payment schedule they

could live with forever.

Don’t view the relationship as an expense

It’s so easy to move your relationship with promiscuous sneezers from investment to expense.

After all, at the beginning it’s great because these people are dramatically cutting your

acquisition costs and helping you grow. But once you do grow, it’s easy to assume your

growth might be able to continue without the “high cost” of paying your sneezers.

In practice, there are two terrible side effects. The first is that you’ll inevitably try to trim the

benefits you offer your sneezers as well as the effort you put into keeping them happy. Better

to just cancel the program outright than to start disappointing these critical allies (remember,

an unhappy promiscuous sneezer can quickly become an angry powerful sneezer).

Second, you’ll find yourself trying to grow using techniques that you haven’t evolved, tested,

measured or practiced. And more often than not, that means failure.

A better strategy is to put a cap on your new sneezer acquisition efforts at the same time you

love and reward your existing sneezers. During this interregnum period, get really good at

tapping other ways to grow. Only after you’re confident that you’ve got the transition

working should you start to phase out the sneezers who got you there in the first place.

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ItÕs More Than Just Word Of Mouth

Marketers have been pursuing word of mouth for years. There are five important principles

that someone unleashing an ideavirus should understand—principles that marketers

pursuing old-fashioned word of mouth didn’t use:

1. An idea merchant understands that creating the virus is the single most important part of

her job. So she’ll spend all her time and money on creating a product and environment that

feeds the virus.

2. An idea merchant understands that by manipulating the key elements of idea

propagation—the velocity, the vector, the smoothness, the persistence and the identification

of sneezers—she can dramatically alter a virus’s success.

Definition: PERSISTENCE Some ideas stick around a long time with each person,

influencing them (and those they sneeze on) for months or years to come. Others have a

much shorter half-life before they fade out.

Definition: VECTOR As an ideavirus moves through a population, it usually follows a

vector. It could be a movement toward a certain geographic or demographic audience, for

example. Sometimes an ideavirus starts in a sub-group and then breaks through that niche

into the public consciousness. Other times, it works its way through a group and then just

stops. Napster vectored straight to college kids. Why? Because they combined the three

things necessary for the virus to catch on: fast connection, spare time and an obsession with

new music.

3. The idea merchant remembers that digital word of mouth is a permanent written record

online, a legacy that will follow the product, for good or for ill, forever.

4. An idea merchant realizes that the primary goal of a product or service is not just to satisfy

the needs of one user. It has to deliver so much wow, be so cool, so neat and so productive

that the user tells five friends. Products market themselves by creating and reinforcing

ideaviruses.

5. An idea merchant knows that the ideavirus follows a lifecycle and decides at which

moment to shift from paying to spread it, to charging the user and profiting from it.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 51 http://www.ideavirus.com

An Ideavirus Adores A Vacuum

It’s very hard to keep two conflicting ideaviruses in your head at the same time

(Communism: evil or benign? Martha Stewart: pro or con? Can’t have both). So if an idea

already inhabits space in your consumer’s brain, your idea can’t peacefully coexist. It usually

has to dislodge a different idea, the incumbent, and that’s always tough.

Given that, the best friend of an ideavirus is a vacuum. When “60 Minutes” ran the story

about runaway acceleration in Audi cars, it was an ideal ideavirus. Why? Because most people

had never driven an Audi. Most people had never interacted with the Audi company. Most

people didn’t have a best friend who loved his Audi. As a result, the virus rushed in, filled the

vacuum and refused to be dislodged.

Audi, of course, did exactly the wrong thing in fighting the virus. They issued a tight-lipped

response and relied on engineering data to PROVE that they were right. Very correct, very

German and totally ineffective. It cost the company billions of dollars in lost sales.

Audi didn’t have to go out and spread the idea that Audi’s were good cars. That would have

been pretty straightforward if they were starting from scratch. Instead, Audi had to undo the

idea that had been spread by “60 Minutes”. And responding “did not” to TV’s “did too” was

a recipe for failure.

Instead, they could have countered the virus by filling in the rest of the vacuum. I would

have advised them to put an Audi 5000 in every major shopping mall in America. Let people

sit in it. Invite them to take the “Audi Sudden Acceleration Test” and see for themselves

what the car was like. By creating a more vivid and forceful alternative to a television hatchet

job, Audi could have unleashed its own countervirus.

At the beginning, the Internet was a vacuum. A Yahoo! or an eBay or an Amazon could walk

in and propagate its ideavirus fast and cheap. Today, though, launching a new search engine

or a new email service is hard indeed. Why? Because the vacuum’s gone.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 52 http://www.ideavirus.com

Take the much-coveted Aeron chair from Herman Miller. The company introduced this

puffy, bouncy desk chair for star executives and invented a market where none had

previously existed. Suddenly, you could spend a lot of money on a chair that actually worked

better, as opposed to just one that made you look bigger when you were busy firing people.

When Internet marketing pioneer Site Specific raised its first round of venture capital, the

principals went out and spent $15,000 on these chairs! This is a chair so remarkable, it was

featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

Now, of course, there are plenty of neat, ergonomic desk chairs. One of Herman Miller’s

biggest competitors is betting the farm on their new Leap chair. Their MBA’s have taken a

hard look at Aeron’s success and market share and decided that they can capture x% of the

market. The problem, of course, is that there’s no longer a vacuum. The problem is that

now, instead of spreading a virus about how you can be more comfortable all day, they have

to spread a much smaller, and less compelling virus about why their chair is a little better

than the chair you’ve already heard of.

There are vacuums in your industry. But not for long….

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Once It Does Spread, An Ideavirus Follows A Lifecycle. Ignore The Lifecycle

And The Ideavirus Dies Out. Feed It Properly And You Can Ride It For A Long

Time.

Tom Peters co-wrote In Search of Excellence nearly twenty years ago. Through some smart

marketing moves (not to mention a great virus) the book became an epidemic and turned

into the bestselling business book ever written.

Tom’s career could have followed the arc of almost every other business writer… a big hit

followed by a long decline into obscurity. But instead of ignoring the lifecycle, Tom insisted

on riding it.

And he’s still riding it today. Every few years he unleashes a new ideavirus. He writes

mindblowing articles (like the “Brand Called You” cover piece for Fast Company a few years

ago) and follows up with books and exhausting worldwide speaking tours. When he shows

up in a town to give a speech, perhaps a third of the people there are dyed-in-the-wool Tom

Peters fans. And the rest of the audience? Brought there by the fans, exposed to his virus,

ready to be turned into fans.

By leveraging the base that his first book brought him, Tom has built a career out of

launching new ideaviruses. Sure, none of them were as big as In Search of Excellence, but the

vacuum keeps getting smaller, so the opportunities are smaller.

Other companies and ideas have ridden their first wave and then disappeared. People no

longer clamor to dance the Hustle or to get into Studio 54. They don’t visit the once hot

jennicam website or pay a premium for front row seats at Cats. Why? Because instead of

institutionalizing the process of improving, honing and launching new ideaviruses to replace

the dying ones, the “owners” of these viruses milked them until they died.

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Viral Marketing Is An Ideavirus, But Not All Ideaviruses Are Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is a special case of an ideavirus. Viral marketing is an ideavirus in which the

medium of the virus IS the product. It’s an idea where the idea is the amplifier.

DEFINITION: AMPLIFIER A key difference between word of mouth and an ideavirus is

that word of mouth dies out while an ideavirus gets bigger. Why? Because something

amplifies the recommendations to a far larger audience. That could be TV or other forms of

media (a good review in the New York Times that amplifies the message of one reviewer to

many readers) or it could be the web (a site like planetfeedback.com amplifies the message of

a single user).

Steve Jurvetson, the venture capitalist behind Hotmail, coined the term “viral marketing” to

describe the way the service grew. Hotmail offered free email. That alone was a very

compelling two-word business proposition. But the magic of the company was that in every

single email you sent using the service, there was a little ad on the bottom of the note. And

the ad said, “Get Your Private, Free Email from Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com”.

Every time you sent a note, you spread the virus. The magic of viral marketing is that the

medium carries the message. The more you use Hotmail, the more you spread the virus. But

note: It was also extremely smooth…. The Hotmail site was just a click away from an email,

and it took just a few clicks more to start using it—and sending Hotmail’s built-in ads to

your friends.

Unfortunately, not every product lends itself to viral marketing. Viral marketing requires

that the product you’re using be communications-focused or very public. The new VW

Beetle is an example of viral marketing. Why? Because the more you drive it, the more

people see it. And the more Beetles people see, the more they want one. It’s not audible and

it’s not as smooth as Hotmail, but it is most definitely viral.

Many of the very best Internet ideas are built around some level of viral marketing. Using an

earlier example, Referrals.com pays big money to people who recruit their friends for hot

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jobs. Of course, the act of recruiting your friends is also the act of telling them about

Referrals.com.

Try not to get too obsessed with the magic, self-referencing nature of viral marketing

companies. They’re a very special case—for example, it’s hard to imagine how most books

could use viral marketing. Interesting, though, that line-dances like the Hustle and the

Macarena DID use viral marketing. After all, you can’t do the dance unless you teach your

friends how!

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What Does It Take To Build And Spread An Ideavirus?

There are two questions you can ask yourself about your idea before you launch

it…questions that will help you determine how likely your idea will become an ideavirus.

Is it worth it?

Nobody spreads an ideavirus as a favor to you. They do it because it’s remarkable, thoughtprovoking,

important, profitable, funny, horrible or beautiful. In today’s winner-take-all

world, there’s no room for a me-too offering, or worse, BORING products and services. If

it’s not compelling, it will never lead to an ideavirus.

Face it. Nobody is going to hand out big rewards ever again for being on time, performing

work of good quality, being useful, finishing a project on budget or being good enough.

That’s expected. That’s a given. The rewards (and the ideavirus) belong to the first, the

fastest, the coolest, the very best.

The biggest mistake companies make is that they chicken out. If your idea doesn’t become a

virus, it’s most likely because it didn’t deserve to become a virus.

If you’re now defining yourself as an idea merchant (hey, it’s either that or lose), then you

must accept the fact that being brave and bold in the creation of ideas is the only reason you

went to work today.

Is it smooth?

After someone’s been exposed to an ideavirus just once, they’re not likely to actually catch it.

We’ve made our brains bulletproof and ideaproof. There’s so much clutter, so much noise,

so many ideas to choose from that the vast majority of them fail to make a dent.

Think about the last time you walked through a bookstore (the home of ideaviruses waiting

to happen). How many books did you stop and look at? Pick up? Turn over? And how many

of those books ended up in your shopping basket? Got read? Led you to tell ten friends?

Precious few, that’s for sure.

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Compare this to the Harry Potter phenomenon… the bestselling books of the last few years,

created just because kids told kids. A classic ideavirus, and one that initially grew with no

promotion at all from the publisher.

It’s difficult to get from awareness to the “sale” of an idea, to convert a stranger into a friend

and a friend into a carrier of your ideavirus. An ideavirus succeeds when it pierces our natural

defenses and makes an impact.

In greek mythology, they tell the story of the Medusa. The Medusa was part of the race of

Gorgons—beings with a horrible curse. Anyone who looked in their eyes immediately and

permanently turned to stone.

There are plenty of marketers who wish that their ads or their product had the power of the

Medusa: that every person who saw it would be immediately transfixed, rooted to the spot,

and converted into a customer for life. (Of course, they don’t want their customers to die a

horrible death and be turned into stone, but I couldn’t find a Greek myth in which an evil

goddess turned you into a frequent shopper of Kate Spade purses, getting a second mortgage

just to pay for them.)

Alas, there are precious few Gorgon products and even fewer ad campaigns with Gorgon-like

properties. It’s foolish to expect that one exposure to your message will instantly convert

someone from stranger to raving ideavirus-spreading fan. So plan on a process. Plan on a

method that takes people from where they are to where you want them to go.

And while you’re at it, work on the product. Because a catchier, more compelling, more viral

product makes your job 100 times easier.

These are critical decisions because of the attention deficit marketers are facing. In 1986, the

year I published my first book, there were about 300 other business books published. In

1998, there were 1,778 business books brought to market.

The supermarket sees about 15,000 new products introduced every year. The Levenger

catalog alone features more than 50 different pens and pencils, none of which were available

Unleashing the Ideavirus 58 http://www.ideavirus.com

just a couple years ago. There isn’t a marketplace out there that isn’t more crowded than it

was a decade ago.

In a world where products are screaming for attention, the most precious commodity is

attention. And attention is harder and harder to achieve.

If you already understand the power of permission, your next question might be, “Fine, but

how do we get permission? How do we get the first date… the first interaction where we ask

people if we can start an ongoing dialogue about our products and their needs?”

My answer used to be a rather weak mumble about buying ads. The right answer, however,

is to create an ideavirus. The right answer is to let the market tell itself about your products

and services and give you permission to continue the dialogue without your having to pay for

it each time. The right answer is to create products so dynamic and virusworthy that you

earn the attention.

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There Are Three Key Levers That Determine How Your Ideavirus Will Spread:

Where do you start? What are the key elements worth focusing on to turbocharge your idea

and turn it into a virus? There are three things to focus on:

1. How big do you launch?

2. How smooth is it?

3. How can you turn trial into persistence?

1. How many people know about it before the spreading starts?

You can launch big or you can launch small. Vindigo (a viral phenomenon discussed in

detail later) launched their Palm ideavirus with just 100 people. Within weeks, that number

had grown to 3,000, and then quickly to more than 100,000. All without advertising.

However, if you’re entering a vacuum and there’s plenty of competition on the horizon,

launching big (while more expensive) can increase the chances that you’ll succeed.

How to launch big? With traditional interruption advertising. With sponsorships. With free

samples. One of the dumbest things marketers do is put artificial barriers in the way of trial.

For example, it’s obvious that one of the best ways to kill sales of a new car is to charge

people $100 to take a test drive.

But charging for a test drive is just as dumb as a politician charging people to hear a speech,

or a movie studio charging for the coming attractions. When you launch an ideavirus, the

more people who can see it fast, the faster it will spread.

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2. The importance of smoothness.

In addition to being persistent and cool, an ideavirus spreads the fastest when it’s smooth.

Persistence matters because the longer people are sneezing about your idea, the more people

they infect. Cool is critical because if it’s not virusworthy, it’s just not going to take off. But

smooth is essential because if you make it easy for the virus to spread, it’s more likely to do

so. In viral marketing (for products like the Polaroid camera and Ofoto.com) the ideal

solution is to build smooth transference tools right into the idea—which can be difficult.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Amazon tried with “Member Get a Member”

promotions, in which they bribe members to tell their friends to buy books from Amazon

(get $5 for your friends and $5 for you!). ZDNet puts a button next to every story they

publish on their website: click here to send this article to a friend. Smooth.

Tupperware built an entire company around the smooth transfer of product enthusiasm

from one friend to another. When you have a Tupperware party you are simultaneously

hanging out with friends, demonstrating products you like, selling them and recruiting other

Unleashing the Ideavirus 61 http://www.ideavirus.com

people to do the same to their friends. By focusing obsessively on how to make it smooth,

you can dramatically increase the velocity of the ideavirus.

3. Turning trial into persistence.

Sooner or later, you’ve got to turn momentary attention into an embrace of your idea, and

then, hopefully, into conversion of the user into a sneezer.

Permission marketing becomes a critical tool in working people through this transition. The

Hare Krishnas have grown their sect by inviting people to eat a vegetarian dinner with them.

Intrigued or just hungry, people give them momentary attention and then permission to talk

to them about this new way of life.

Sometimes people leave, having done nothing but eaten dinner. Sometimes, people listen to

what’s being said and decide to embrace the ideals being discussed. And sometimes, they

become converted and turn into sneezers, volunteering to go out and invite other people over

for dinner the next night.

Note that they didn’t start by walking up to a stranger and proselytizing about their religion.

Instead, they used a gradual technique to sell their idea effectively and turn it into a virus.

Are there religions that are not viruses? Sure, the Shakers were. They didn’t try to convert at

all. That’s why there are no Shakers left.

On the web, this multi-step process is too often overlooked by companies facing short-term

financial pressure (combine this with the legendary short attention span of entrepreneurs and

you can see why this happens). Instead of building a virusworthy cool product or service,

identifying a hive, promoting an idea, and making it smooth and persistent, they just spend a

few million dollars to buy advertising.

The hope, of course, is that somehow by spending enough money on clever ads, they’ll

magically create a critical mass of positive energy that will turn their idea into a virus.

They’re looking for a shortcut, and as a result, leading their companies to doom. Building a

virus takes insight, talent and most of all, patience.

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After a consumer is interested enough to visit ZDNet or Google.com or some other neat new

site, what should these sites do to augment the ideavirus? Three things:

1. Get permission to follow up: make it easy for me to learn about why I should embrace this

idea over time. All those ads you ran are a great way to get someone to your site, but it might

cost your site $100 in marketing expenditures to get that one visit from just one consumer. If

you don’t get permission to follow up, the entire $100 is wasted.

2. Make as many supporting manifestos available as possible, in whatever forms necessary, to

turn consumers from skeptics into converts. This can include endorsements, press reviews,

even criticisms and commonly made objections. Think of the Hare Krishnas at dinner. The

more they can expose you to during that hour, the better the odds of spreading the virus.

3. Make it easy for consumers to spread the ideavirus by providing a multitude of tell-afriend

tools, as well as overt rewards for becoming a sneezer.

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Ten Questions Ideavirus Marketers Want Answered

1.

Have we chosen a hive we’re capable of dominating?

2.

How likely are the powerful sneezers to adopt our virus?

3.

Do we know who the powerful sneezers are and how to contact them?

4.

What can we do to our product to make it more virusworthy?

5.

Are we rewarding promiscuous sneezers sufficiently to get them on our side?

6.

Have we figured out what we want the sneezers to say? How are we teaching them to say

it?

7.

Even if our product isn’t purely viral by nature, is it possible to add more viral marketing

elements to it (or to our marketing approach)?

8.

Do we know how to get permission from people once they’ve been touched by the virus?

Do we know what to say after we get permission?

9.

How smooth is the transfer of the ideavirus?

10. Is our offering good enough to wow this hive?

11. Do we have the resources and time to dominate this hive before others rush in to fill the

vacuum?

12. Have we built in multiple feedback loops so we can alter the virus as it moves and grows?

13. Have we identified the vector we want the virus to move in, and have we built the tools

and plans to keep it moving in the vector we’d like?

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Five Ways To Unleash An Ideavirus

Of the five ways to unleash an ideavirus, the most important element they share is that for

best results you must build this thinking in from the very beginning. If you’ve got an existing

product or service and you’re hoping to build a virus around it, your job will be more

difficult. The ideas behind the lightning fast success stories have all worked because the

ideavirus concept was baked in from the start. That’s one of the reasons more established

companies are having so much trouble competing in the new economy—they’re restricted

because of the standards and systems they built in years ago.

The five techniques, in order of sheer market power, are:

1. Go full viral. The more you use it, the more you market it (whether you want to or not).

In essence, using the product is the same as marketing it.

2. Pay off the promiscuous.

3. Make it smooth for the powerful.

4. Digitally augment word of mouth.

5. Altruism…reward the friends of the promiscuous.

1. Go full viral. This is the holy grail of ideavirus marketing. The beauty of viral marketing is

that if you properly construct the virus, you can grow like a weed and dominate the

market—if you can do it before the competition.

Polaroid and Hotmail are the poster children for viral marketing, but there are a few other

that are worth looking at:

Blue Mountain Arts was a pioneer in creating a virus around the idea of sending electronic

greeting cards. The virus is simple to understand—in order to send a greeting card

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successfully, you’ve got to send it to someone. Of course, once someone receives the card, if

they like the idea, they’re just a click away from sending someone else a card!

Even though the cards featured by Blue Mountain Arts could charitably be called “cheesy,”

the virus caught on. People got the idea that it might be fun to send electronic cards to their

friends… and the idea spread. The company started small, with no real advertising. Just a

few people sent the first batch of cards.

But then the magic of viral marketing kicked in. Let’s assume that each person sends cards to

five people. Let’s also assume that those recipients have a 50% chance of being interested

enough in the concept to go to the site and send cards to five of their friends. If we start with

ten people, the generations look like this:

10 people send 50 cards

which means that 25 people get the virus and send 125 cards

which means that 63 people get the virus and send 315 cards

which means that 162 people get the virus and send 810 cards

which means that 405 people get the virus and send 2025 cards…

Now, that may seem like a slow start, but if you assume that each generation takes three days

to occur (I send out ten cards and within three days, five friends show up and do the same

thing), then you’d have 58 million users in 54 days!

Of course, that doesn’t really happen. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to continue to get a 50%

conversion rate. And it’s certain that you’ll soon hit duplication, with individuals starting to

get cards from different people. But the math is nevertheless stunning.

The key number in the equation is the percentage of people who convert. If you lower it

from 50% in the Blue Mountain Arts example to 30%, the number of users drops from 58

million to less than 10,000. Which is why conversion is so critical.

The battle between Hallmark and Blue Mountain in this space is fascinating. Hallmark and

American Greetings, both old-line card companies, were well aware of the potential of the

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Internet. But they were also unable to imagine a world in which cards didn’t cost money—so

they made the cards they sold online available for a fee.

As a result, no virus emerged from the Hallmark site. If someone was charmed by a card and

came to the site to send a few, they discovered that they’d have to pay to do that. They didn’t

convert. Conversion fell below the magic number and the virus never ignited.

You can compute the magic number by multiplying the number of cards the average user

sends (in the example above, it’s 5) by the percentage of people who convert (50%). In this

case, the magic number is 2.5, which is how much bigger each generation will be than the

one before. Until the magic number exceeds 1.2 or 1.3, it’s hard for a product to get viral fast

enough to beat the competition.

By focusing on smoothness (it’s only three clicks to send a card and it’s free, so go ahead and

try it), Blue Mountain built an amazing conversion machine. As a result, the site grew and

grew until Excite bought it for nearly a billion dollars worth of stock. Whatever Blue

Mountain’s goal—to make a lot of money, to affect a lot of people or to spread their idea far

and wide—they’ve succeeded.

Hallmark and American Greetings have seen the light, and now they, along with Yahoo! and

others, offer free greeting cards. The challenge that they face is that there’s no longer a

vacuum, so their ideavirus can’t spread as fast, and their magic number is far lower than that

which Blue Mountain Arts enjoyed at its peak (the number must go down as the population

of untouched people approaches zero).

Another example of viral marketing worth looking at is Ofoto. Ofoto is an Internet

alternative to Fotomat. Instead of dropping your film off at the corner, you send your digital

camera files to Ofoto and they send back beautiful prints.

This is a compelling story, but there isn’t enough money in the world to communicate it

through traditional marketing means. Kodak spends $100 million a year in advertising (and

has been advertising for a hundred years). On top of the huge amount of noise out there,

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there are just no easy media channels Ofoto can use to spread its message in a cost-effective,

fast way to the target hive: digital photography users.

So Ofoto also launched a digital photo album. This album lets you post your favorite digital

photos online, for free, and invite friends to come see them. Here’s the good part: a digital

photo album with no one looking at it is worthless!

Thus, once you upload your photos, you’ve got to motivate your friends and relatives to stop

by and see the photos. You become Ofoto’s #1 marketing weapon.

Take pictures of your kid’s soccer team. Upload them. Tell everyone on the team where to

find the photos.

Some of the parents will like the photos so much they’ll click a button and buy a print.

Ofoto has a new customer. Interestingly, the content was created by someone else —not the

person who bought the photo. This is an effect that never happens to Kodak.

Even better, some people who see the photos of the soccer team will realize that they too

would like to be able to post pictures for friends. So the torch passes, and Ofoto has added

another photographer to its ever growing stable.

It’s worth noting that the conversion rate for Ofoto is almost certainly going to be lower

than it was for Blue Mountain Arts. First, it’s much less smooth. In order to spread the word

that you’ve posted someone’s picture, you’ve got to find that person and tell them about it,

and then they’ve got to hustle themselves to a computer and go look at it… not as clean as

the all-electronic approach of Blue Mountain.

Second, the virus is less smooth. If I want to buy a print, I’ve got to enter my name and

address, AND I’ve got to pay for it. If I want to upload photos, I’ve got to figure out how to

use my digital camera upload files, or I’ve got to mail in my traditional film to Ofoto for

developing.

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Despite these obstacles, Ofoto has a very positive magic number as demonstrated by the fact

that they’ve amassed more than 500,000 users in less than 12 weeks.

The astute reader has probably noticed a critical difference between Hotmail and Blue

Mountain Arts vs. Ofoto.

Hotmail and Blue Mountain Arts are self-referencing ideaviruses. The virus spreads with the

use of the product whether the user wants it to or not. When you first start using Hotmail, the

self-promoting signature line promoting Hotmail is automatically included in every email

you send. You didn’t choose to do that (though you can turn it off), it just goes along

anyway.

In the case of Blue Mountain, the symbiotic relationship between the product and the

marketing is even more obvious. The card is the marketing, so using it is, by definition,

promoting it.

Ofoto, on the other hand, does no such thing. You could quite happily use Ofoto for

developing, sorting and storing your photos and never recommend it to anyone.

Clearly, if the marketing element is benign and totally integrated into your offering, your

magic number is going to be much higher; the symbiosis pays off with big dividends. The

product has 100% efficiency…every user becomes a promoter. The challenge is this: it only

works for a very select group of products and services—probably not yours.

Why have I gone to great lengths to point out that viral marketing is merely a subset of

ideavirus marketing? Because while very few of us will ever be lucky enough to enjoy the full

fruits of a viral marketing campaign, most of us can unleash an ideavirus.

2. Pay off the promiscuous.

Paying powerful sneezers in an effort to make them promiscuous (but have them keep the

power) is an extremely difficult balancing act, but if you can do it successfully, you can turn

it into a billion dollar business.

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Some people call it network marketing or multi-level marketing. Others think of it as a paid

celebrity endorsement. But it can be as simple as member-get-a-member for your local health

club.

The basic idea is simple: If your recommendation is going to help my business, I’m happy to

pay you to recommend me.

The implementations vary all over the map. When Nike paid the coach of the Duke

University basketball team millions of dollars (for him, not Duke) to coerce his team

members to switch to Nike shoes, they were turning a formerly powerful sneezer into a

promiscuous one. Why? When people see what the Blue Devils wear, they might decide to

wear the same thing.

On the Net, technology makes it easy to take this model and make it much more personal.

Amazon’s affiliate program, in which Amazon pays users a portion of the book revenue they

generate through referrals, is built around this model.

Go to http://www.permission.com. There, at the bottom of the page, is a link where you can buy a

copy of Permission Marketing. Click on it and it will take you to Barnes & Noble or

Amazon—right to the page on the site that sells Permission Marketing. Both stores give me a

kickback on every sale.

Did I send you to Amazon just because I’m going to get a kickback? Nope. It doesn’t do me

any good to recommend a bookseller where you won’t end up buying the book—I’ll end up

with no kickback and no book sales either. I recommended Amazon because you’re likely to

have one-click shopping already set up, increasing the chances the book will get sold. I also

recommended Barnes & Noble, because their affiliate program is at least as good, and some

of my customers would prefer to shop there. But the kickback still influenced my decision,

and has clearly motivated hundreds of thousands of individuals and businesses to set up links

to their favorite books at Amazon and at Barnes & Noble.

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This approach is far less risky than Nike’s. Nike has no idea if the Blue Devils actually sell

shoes. They also have to pay for the endorsement in advance, with no refunds if they’re

wrong.

Amazon and other affiliate marketers, on the other hand, are using the power of the Net to

create a deal with no losers and no downside. You can set up an affiliate link in a few

minutes. For free. If it works, you get paid. If it doesn’t work, you don’t. And it doesn’t cost

Amazon a dime.

Because of this risk model, affiliate programs are flourishing. Be Free, a leading provider of

services to marketers using this approach, calls it Performance Marketing. They currently list

235 websites that are offering affiliate programs.

While it may be interesting to earn a dollar or two on a sale (interesting, that is, if you can

sell thousands a month), some companies are taking a different tack.

Woody Chin, founder of Referrals.com, thinks he’s found a way to change the way people

interact when it comes to job hunts and other sorts of business-to-business commerce.

Instead of paying people a nickel or even a buck, he’s paying people $1,000 to $5,000 each

for that priceless commodity: a referral.

Here’s how job filling works before Referrals.com: Hire a contingency headhunter. Offer to

pay a third of the final salary, but only if you hire someone the headhunter brings along. So

the hunter stands to earn $20,000 or more.

Now, the headhunter hits the phones. She calls everyone she can, and basically begs for leads.

There’s no obvious benefit to the referrer, except for the possible goodwill that occurs when

you find a friend a job.

Woody and Referrals.com are aiming to change that.

With Referrals.com, the hiring manager sends out a description of the job to people she

thinks might know good candidates. These referrers can be people she knows in the industry,

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company insiders or super-agents (and anyone can be a super-agent—read on). The key here

is that the referrals are from people whose opinion she values. The description includes a

bounty she is willing to pay for a hire as well as a limit to how deep and how wide a referral

tree she desires.

It’s fascinating to see that Referrals.com is building in a limit to the ideavirus! They don’t

want any given job search to get out of control and start being passed from friend to friend

ad infinitum. Instead, they artificially limit how deep a job search can go into the

community. This limit ensures that employers can focus their searches on a certain hive

without it running amok throughout the entire population. The web has turned what might

have been a multi-level marketing business into a carefully regulated ideavirus.

Anyone who gets involved in referring can sign-up to be a “super-agent.” Once you sign up

as a super-agent, your performance ratings will be available to hiring managers (in recruiting)

looking to find experts to help with their search. And of course, you get first crack at the new

job listings.

Let’s say the company wants a CTO. Let’s say they’re willing to pay $5,000 for a successful

hire. And let’s say they’re only willing to go two levels down the referral tree.

Now, a super-agent can send an email to five people he knows who might be perfect for the

job. If one of them takes the job, the super-agent gets $5,000 just for sending five emails.

But let’s say none of the recipients want the job. But one of them knows someone who does.

Bang. He forwards the mail a second time, and this time it lands on the desk of the perfect

hire. Assuming this guy gets the job, the first super-agent and the second referrer split the

money.

All of a sudden, you’ve monetized word of mouth! Referrals.com could create a class of

thousands of “super-agents” who spend their time doing nothing but finding people through

networking. Essentially, it lets just about anyone become a contingency headhunter. (Now, I

know what you think of contingency headhunters… but the small scale of each person’s tree

makes it unlikely it’ll ever get that bad!)

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Of course, it goes deeper than this. If it works for headhunting, maybe it works for finding

new clients for Viant, or for people who are looking to take a cruise. Or what about real

estate? If everyone could become a contingency broker, doesn’t life online get interesting? If

the Internet succeeds when it monetizes previously random analog events (like garage sales at

eBay) then this may just be the killer app for this space.

Does Referrals.com work? I actually have no idea. It’s just launching. We don’t know if the

promiscuous will overwhelm the powerful and pollute the whole system. We don’t know the

velocity of the idea or how long this particular virus will last. But it’s clear that something will

replace the current model of headhunters spamming powerful sneezers and essentially

stealing their rolodex.

Alladvantage.com wanted to take the multi-level marketing approach instead. Each person

they signed up got a commission on the revenue generated by the people those people signed

up. And so on.

They got off to a very hot start, signing up millions of users in a very short period of time.

But now, according to the Wall Street Journal, they’ve discovered that maybe they were

paying these promiscuous sneezers too much to make any money in the end. So Alladvantage

just announced new rules in the way they pay their sneezers.

The result was predictable… their most important sneezers were outraged. When you pay

people to refer on your behalf, you’ve got to expect that they are indeed motivated by

money, and when the money goes, so will your sneezers.

Multi-level marketing has gotten a bad reputation among powerful sneezers. Why? Because

individuals are encouraged to suspend their judgment and embrace the idea that several

generations down the pike, they’ll be rich.

While this is a fine choice for an individual to make, it’s problematic for those who are

friends with this individual. Why? Because the personal interaction is no longer on a level

playing field. Person A uses his friendship with person B to encourage her to buy or use

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something that isn’t necessarily in her best interest. If she agrees, then person A sees a

significant return, while person B inevitably sees LESS of a return. If she resists, the

friendship is strained.

If the pyramid is steep enough (if there’s enough money promised at the end of the tunnel),

this sort of approach can work. But it usually leaves scorched earth in its path, and

disappointments in the form of broken friendships or financial promises not reached.

To date, very few companies—online or off—have figured out a way to turn network or

multi-level marketing into a large, sustainable business. Those that have, like Rexall, Amway

and perhaps Alladvantage, now have to work even harder to undo the bad reputation that

this approach has earned.

3. Make it smooth for the powerful.

One of the most elegant ways to take advantage of the new tight networking among

consumers is to identify the powerful members of a hive and make it as easy as possible for

them to tell each other about an ideavirus.

When online content sites first debuted, they were extremely hesitant about sharing their

articles. Some of them went so far as to make it impossible to copy and paste the text in an

article. They were petrified that one person would copy an article and no one else would

come to the site and see the ads.

What they soon learned, however, was that the easier they made it to share, the more likely

people were to tell their friends. And if someone came in to read one article, they were likely

to read more. ZDNet.com was one of the first sites I encountered that used this technique.

In one promotion my former company Yoyodyne did for them, they found that more than

20% of the people exposed to a compelling piece of content actually forwarded it to a friend.

Fast Company magazine—devoted to bootstrapping start-ups—does the same thing. Visit

http://www.fastcompany.com/team/wtaylor.html and you can see a list of the articles that co-

Unleashing the Ideavirus 74 http://www.ideavirus.com

founder Bill Taylor has written for that magazine. They’re all there, unabridged, and you can

read them for free.

But the smooth part of this wannabe ideavirus is the little button on the bottom that says

“Click here to send this page to a friend.” All you have to do is type in their email address

and your email address and—boom—it’s done. If his articles contain ideas that are

virusworthy, the Fast Company site is doing a good job in helping them go viral.

Inside.com, which sells subscriptions to its online media newsletter and website for $200, is

happy to have people send these pricey articles to non-subscribing friends. In fact, there’s a

big “send to a friend” button on the bottom of every article. The reason is obvious. Once

you’ve read one, you might be willing to pay for more. All they need is a few of the ideas

they publish to become viral and suddenly the business of selling subscriptions will get a lot

healthier.

In essence, Inside.com is hoping that its readers will market the site for them, spreading ideas

that might go viral and then bringing in new paying customers as a result.

4. Digitally augment word of mouth.

This is a really interesting way of looking at the fundamental change that’s occurring, and

understanding how word of mouth is different from an ideavirus.

If I was delighted by a movie in the old days, I’d tell a friend or two. My comments would

end up influencing three or four or six people.

There are plenty of books on this topic and marketers have always been enamored by the

potential of word of mouth. Alas, without amplification, it usually peters out.

Today, if I like a movie, I can post my comments on a variety of online movie sites. Or I can

email ten friends (who can each forward the mail to ten friends). Later, when the video

comes out, I can post my review on Amazon, where hundreds or thousands of people might

read it.

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Using a service like Epinions.com, I can go online and search out opinions on everything

from BMW motorcycles to summer camps.

What’s neat about digital word of mouth (let’s call it word of mouse) is:

1.

It is extremely persistent. Unlike a comment at the watercooler or over the phone, a

comment in a newsgroup, on Epionions or Amazon lasts forever.

2.

It has much greater velocity. The number of ripples my stone makes when dropped in

the pond of public opinion is far greater online. Why? Because if I tell you I like my car,

it might be months before that sort of car comes up again in conversation. But online,

conversations are happening 24 hours a day, and the “conversation” on any given web

page is precisely about what that page is about. As a result, the number of interactions

multiplies geometrically.

3.

It can have more credibility. At first, the opposite was true. An anonymous stock tip or

other form of online recommendation was totally suspect. The sneezer could be a paid

mole, or worse, someone with horrible taste. But now, thanks to rating systems and the

presence of powerful sneezers, it’s possible to know how congruent your tastes are with

those of the sneezer, so it ends up having a ton of credibility.

Amazon is now rating the reviewers! A visit to

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-reviews/-/AFVQZQ8PW0L/102-72353452994554

shows me that Harriet Klausner is the top ranked reviewer on the entire site.

Harriet, a retired librarian, has written more than 500 reviews and has received more than

5,000 votes from other folks who agree with her taste. If Harriet likes a book that you like,

you’re certainly going to give her sneeze some credence in the future.

5. Altruism.

Several years ago, a hot chef in Chicago decided to go out on his own and open his first

restaurant. Realizing how competitive the market was, he did a neat thing. He never opened

it to the public. He refused to accept reservations from strangers.

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If you wanted to get into Les Nomades, you had to be a member. And how did you do that?

Well, the first 500 people were given memberships because the chef knew them as regular

customers at his old job, and he personally invited them.

Then he told each member that they were welcome to sponsor other members. All they had

to do was vouch for someone and he’d make them a member too.

So, what’s in it for the member to nominate someone else? Simple. They scored points with

their friends as powerful sneezers because they could “get you in” to the hottest restaurant in

town.

Of course, this wouldn’t have worked if the restaurant hadn’t been spectacular. But it was.

And it was exclusive. But by allowing his members to do his marketing for him, by giving

them an altruistic tool that increased their power as professional sneezers, the chef was able to

get out of the way and let his customers sell for him.

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SECTION THREE: The Ideavirus Formula

STEAL THIS IDEA!

Here’s what you can do to spread the word about Unleashing the Ideavirus:

1. Send this file to a friend (it’s sort of big, so ask first).

2. Send them a link to http://www.ideavirus.com so they can download it themselves.

3. Visit http://www.fastcompany.com/ideavirus to read the Fast Company article.

4. Buy a copy of the hardcover book at

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0970309902/permissionmarket.

5. Print out as many copies as you like.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 78 http://www.ideavirus.com

Managing Digitally-Augmented Word Of Mouth

That’s what I would have called this book if it had been published by the Harvard Business

Review. And you probably wouldn’t be reading it now! Words matter. Understanding

exactly what we’re talking about makes it far easier to actually do something about the world

around us. That’s why I take such great pains to invent new words and get us all thinking

about exactly what they mean.

If we bump into each other at some convention and you ask me to talk about your business,

I’ll instantly start using words like hive and sneezer and velocity and smoothness. Why?

Because these shorthand phrases make it easy for us to communicate. By using words that

indicate we both understand the underlying factors that leverage an ideavirus, we’re far

likelier to actually get something done.

The ideavirus formula has eight co-efficients. Each one represents not just a concept, but a

variable that you can tweak to make your product or service more viral, to create the

elements you need to drive your idea into the community.

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Tweak The Formula And Make It Work

It may be possible to write down the key elements of building and spreading a virus as a

mathematical formula. No, I don’t think you’ll use it. But understanding the co-efficients

makes it far easier to see what’s important and what’s not. They also help you see the wide

range of factors that can help an idea go viral; focusing on the most highly leveraged factor

for your idea is a first step in launching the virus.

Multiply these five factors:

[reputation benefit to powerful sneezer of recommending virus]

[selfish benefit to promiscuous sneezer of recommending virus]

[smoothness of sharing the virus with a friend]

[power of the amplifier used to spread positive word of mouth]

[frequency of interactions among hive members]

Divided by the sum of these two factors:

[number of times you need to expose someone in this hive in order for the virus to catch]

[number of different sneezers who have to recommend a virus to a given individual for it to

ignite]

And then multiply that by the product of these four factors:

[percentage of infected hive members likely to sneeze]

[number of people the infected sneezer is likely to contact]

[persistence of the virus (how long does a sneezer sneeze?)]

[number of people infected /(divided by) number of people in the hive]

Comments on each component:

[reputation benefit to powerful sneezer of recommending virus]

Powerful sneezers can’t be bought. But don’t forget that they are selfishly motivated. Will

this make me look smart? Will it make someone else happy? Will it make the world a better

place? There are plenty of levers that motivate powerful sneezers to spread the word, and they

are often complicated and subtle. Some of our favorite powerful sneezers: Zagats, Linus

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Torvald, Paul Newman, Ruth Reichl, Randall Rothenberg, Andy Hertzfeld, Chuck Close,

Spike Lee, Bill Taylor, Don Peppers, Peter Mayles, Alan Greenspan and Yo-Yo Ma. You may

not know all of these names, and there are plenty of hive-based sneezers I’ve never heard of,

but what they all have in common is that they’re perceived as insightful and altruistic. Once

people think they can be bought off, their power plummets.

[selfish benefit to promiscuous sneezer of recommending virus]

As we saw in the Amazon affiliate example, if you can make the benefit to the individual

both significant and easy to achieve, people will respond to it. Amazon signed up hundreds

of thousands of affiliates with a simple offer (get a percentage kickback on everything you

recommend) and backed it up with a two-minute procedure for qualifying and actually

getting started.

[smoothness of sharing the virus with a friend]

Once I want to tell someone about your idea, how do I do it? If it’s got a dumb, hard-to-say

name, or an embarrassing implication, I’ll probably pass. On the other hand, Hotmail is

smooth indeed, because every time I send email I’m talking about the idea.

The Polaroid camera used this smoothness brilliantly. After all, the only reason to take a

picture is to show it to other people, and if you can make the showing (and the waiting) turn

into a discussion of the idea, so much the better.

The beauty of Vindigo is similar. In order to tell you about Vindigo, I’m going to pull my

Palm out of my pocket and show it to you. But once I show it to you, I’m only one button

away from actually giving it to you. The thing I want to show you is how easy it is to give

you, so the virus self-reinforces.

Ideally, you’ll figure out not only what a sneezer should say to someone when they talk about

your idea, you’ll also make it easy and automatic for them to do so.

[power of the amplifier used to spread positive word of mouth]

The mother of a friend of mine was runner up for Miss America in the early 1960s. I think

she lost to Anita Bryant. Alas, coming in second did very little for her career. Anita, on the

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other hand, made her fortune squeezing oranges. Point is that once she conquered that hive

of a few judges, the news was amplified far and wide. And the amplification (as per Zipf’s

law) gave her the foundation to create a career.

A challenge in tailoring your ideavirus is to make sure that when you do conquer an

individual or dominate a hive, the good news is amplified as far as possible, preferably at no

cost to you.

[frequency of interactions among hive members]

Some hives (like teenage girls) interact with each other far more frequently (and with much

more intensity) than others—like senior citizens. By understanding the frequency of hive

interaction and then trying to focus on moments of high interactivity, you can dramatically

increase the velocity of a virus.

Trade shows, for example, bring sneezers together for intense periods of information

exchange. By doing something as simple as handing out hats with your logo on them, you

make it more likely that you’ll reinforce your message during this critical time.

[number of times you need to expose someone in this hive in order for the virus to catch]

Some viruses are smooth indeed. See them once and you understand them. It only took one

exposure to the Macarena to get it. In general, the simpler the idea and the lower the risk, the

more likely someone is to get infected. Most of all, though, this variable is driven by how

viral the idea is to begin with. Meaning: is it cool, wonderful, important, dramatically better

and fun?

[number of different sneezers who have to recommend a virus for it to ignite]

Not all ideas have Medusa qualities. We usually need to hear from external sources before

we’re willing to buy into the new thing, especially for risky ideas. Bestseller lists for books

and other products are terrific, as are the sort of seal-of-approval validations that institutional

sneezers look for. “Hey, if it’s good enough for IBM…” say the more timid prospects.

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Bestseller lists are a stand-in for the number of recommendations you need to decide. A

bestseller list says, “There are 24,000 other people who liked this idea.” The reviews on

Amazon are another great example of this. When 50 people post a positive review, it counts

for something.

The alternative, which also works, is actually hearing from sneezers one by one. Some ideas

need only one sneezer to get you try it (like a restaurant) while others might need a hundred

(like switching over to using email or a Palm to run your business).

[percentage of infected hive members likely to sneeze]

Some hives are filled with sneezers. And some ideas make people sneeze more than others.

When John McCain tried to capture his party’s presidential nomination, he discovered an

entire population of people, previously dormant, who were so moved by his candor and

campaign finance message that they started sneezing on his behalf. Not accidentally, many of

these sneezers were in the media, carrying his message far and wide.

Another variable is your ability to increase the likelihood that people who don’t usually

sneeze decide that they’ll make an exception just for you. Focus on the time and place of

your introduction to the hive. Want your employees to spread an important new idea among

themselves? Don’t introduce it at the Friday afternoon beer blast, but rather make it a special

event. Give them the tools they need to spread the word. Reward them for doing so, or make

it clear how the virus will dramatically help your company. It’s not an afterthought—it’s the

core of your marketing campaign.

[number of people the infected sneezer is likely to contact]

This is an especially important metric for promiscuous sneezers. Once you’ve converted

people into spreading your message for their own personal gain, how can you incent them to

spread the word to a LOT of their friends? One way to do this is by offering increasing

returns to the sneezer—the more you bring us, the more we give you (but be careful not to

turn sneezers into spammers, who end up proselytizing strangers and causing a backlash).

Referrals.com aims to do this by turning their best sneezers into super-agents, giving them

better information and more money.

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The same reasoning is obviously a factor in choosing which members of the media to

contact. Saul Hansell at the New York Times has far more reach and influence than Jason

Snaggs at the Phoenix Register. Seems obvious, but what most marketers miss is the fact that a

very small number of powerful sneezers can have an impact far outside their perceived

influence. A reporter with the right readers could have far more sway over your virus than

someone with plenty of reach but little influence.

[persistence of the virus (how long does a sneezer sneeze?)]

A short-lived experience that leaves no lasting effects is hard to turn into a virus, especially if

it’s not a social event like pop music (does every generation after ours realize just how bad

their pop tunes are?). Tattoos, on the other hand, are extraordinarily persistent, so even

though they’re not very smooth, they continue to infect people for decades, making up what

they lack in impact with sheer stick-to-it-ness.

[number of people infected /(divided by) number of people in the hive]

This is about measuring hive dominance. If just a small percentage of people in your chosen

hive have been infected, you really have your work cut out for you. While you shouldn’t

compromise the essence of your idea in order to get a wide platform, you should be superwary

that you don’t start with too small a sample of too large a hive. It’s very easy for your

virus to fade before it catches on.

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Advanced Riffs On The Eight Variables You Can Tweak In Building Your Virus

In this section, we’ll take a look at each of the eight underlying variables in the ideavirus

formula, and try to get a handle on exactly how you can manipulate them for your product.

No two industries rely on the eight fundamental principles in precisely the same way. But

virtually every ideavirus I’ve ever seen uses some of these principles in an extraordinary way,

and just about every one could be improved if it expanded further into the other areas.

The Eight:

1. Sneezers

2. Hive

3. Velocity

4. Vector

5. Medium

6. Smoothness

7. Persistence

8. Amplifier

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Sneezers

As described earlier, there are two kinds of sneezers: Powerful and Promiscuous. While all

eight elements of the formula are critical, this is the area where many brand marketers have

the most control, and thus the most influence.

Choose your sneezers—don’t let them choose you. By focusing obsessively on who you’re

choosing to sneeze on your behalf, you build the foundation for your virus.

Powerful sneezers are certainly the most seductive, in that the right word from the right

sneezer can make all the difference to your virus. If David Letterman visits your diner on

television, or the New Yorker writes a twenty-page rave about your website, or if you win a

MacArthur Fellowship Grant, well, you’ve really made it.

Oprah Winfrey is quite possibly the most successful sneezer of our generation. She has

single-handledly turned more than a dozen books into national bestsellers. She has launched

a magazine that already has more than half a million subscribers. She can influence millions

of the most powerful consumers in America, just by uttering a few sentences.

It’s interesting to see how effectively Oprah and her brandmate Martha Stewart have

successfully monetized their position as powerful sneezers. If they trip and get perceived as

promiscuous sneezers, as sneezers for hire, their effectiveness is quite reduced. But if they can

maintain their position at the same time they sell books and magazines or sheets and towels,

they’ve effectively leveraged their fame.

But few of us are that lucky. Most times, you’re going to have to focus on powerful but less

influential sneezers—individuals or organizations that have something to gain by endorsing

your idea but aren’t so out there that they’re tagged as promiscous sneezers.

Some powerful sneezers are very prominent and thus very hard to reach. The challenge for

most marketers is to find the second tier of sneezer—the approachable, interested sneezer

who can do almost as much for you as Oprah or Martha, but with whom you have a far

greater chance of making an impact.

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The story of The Bridges of Madison County is a great example of this. Warner Books, the

publisher, realized that most other publishers were doing very little to market to the

independent bookstores, and that if he could court them and give them something to sell

that made them feel special, it would translate into a bestseller.

Of course, as soon as the legions of independent booksellers succeeded in turning Bridges

into a phenomenon, they were assaulted by dozens of other less imaginative publishers, all

trying to rush in and use the same strategy. Too late. It got cluttered. They got busy. No one

else ever repeated the focused, obvious success of this approach.

Remember, an ideavirus adores a vacuum, and Bridges filled that vacuum. As other book

marketers rushed in, no one was able ever again to persuade a critical mass of booksellers to

support just one book.

Does this mean Warner was doomed never to be able to repeat this process again? Is that all

there is—just one new gimmick after another? No! Instead, Warner needed to gain

permission from this critical sneezer audience and use that permission to promote the next

book and the next through a channel they were clever enough to build.

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Hive

Winning with an ideavirus begins with the choice of hive. And this choice is so important,

I’d suggest the following: choose your hive first, then build the idea.

Traditionally, marketers start with a problem, or a factory, and go from there. I’ve got a great

widget, and now I need a way to take it to market. Or, we’ve got this excess plant

capacity—let’s find a way to fill it. But that’s not what works today. Choose your market by

identifying a hive that has a problem and has the right concentration of sneezers, the right

amplified networking, the right high velocity of communication and, most of all, an

appropriate vacuum.

Success will come to marketers who attack small but intimate hives. Yes, Yahoo! and eBay hit

huge home runs, but they’re remarkable precisely because success across such a large hive is

rare indeed. We can learn a more relevant lesson from magazines.

Fast Company is one of the fastest-growing (and most profitable) magazines ever. Why? Well

it certainly helps that it’s a great magazine. It also helps that the Internet created a huge

demand for this sort of advertising space. But the real success came in the hive that the

editors selected.

Turns out there are hundreds of thousands of people in mid-sized to large companies who

are eager to do a great job, but feel frustrated at the slow pace and mind-numbing

bureaucracy they face every day. Until Fast Company, the members of this hive didn’t even

know there were others just like them. They didn’t have a tool they could use to reach their

peers.

Fast Company became the identity, the bible, the badge of honor for this new hive. It gave

them a way to communicate, to learn and to have confidence in themselves. By every

measure, the magazine was virusworthy.

Just about every reader of Fast Company became a powerful sneezer. With no compensation

and very little encouragement, they started signing up co-workers for subscriptions, Xeroxing

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page after page of the magazine and passing it around the office. The readers even created a

worldwide network of support groups, meeting in cities on a monthly basis, with no help at

all from the magazine.

Fast Company filled a vacuum. It got viral. It enchanted and connected with a huge legion of

powerful sneezers. All because the editors chose the right hive and created a virusworthy

product.

A few years later, Time Warner launched Real Simple magazine, inspired by the significant

sales of books about simple living. So they launched a magazine dedicated to simplifying our

lives. Obviously, it’s aimed at a very different hive than that of Fast Company. Alas, the

magazine is off to a slow start.

Why?

Because this hive isn’t the right one at the right time. Because there’s a real lack of aggressive

powerful sneezers. Because the hive doesn’t have a built-in forum for communicating with

each other (it’s not office-centric like Fast Company). As a result, the magazine is having a

much harder time going viral.

Choosing your hive

The Zagats Guide to New York City Restaurants is a fascinating document. According to

Zagats, the book is put together by 100,000 reviewers, who ate out an average of four times a

week, spending an average of $40 a person. Do the math. That’s more than $8,000 of mostly

after-tax money spent on eating out every year.

This very special hive of people shares a demographic but is by no means typical of the U.S.

population (which in itself is very different from the world at large). Trying to appeal to

everyone is almost sure to fail, for the simple reason that everyone wants something different!

The reason there isn’t one restaurant in Cincinnati or Indianapolis or Tallahassee that’s as

good as the Union Square Café in New York is not that the population can’t afford the tab.

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There’s certainly enough money in those towns to keep the seats filled in several restaurants

of this ilk. It’s simply that the hive that can afford these restaurants don’t have a high velocity

way to get the word out fast enough to keep the restaurateur happy. And it’s not clear that

they’d persist. In other words, eating in a New York-style fancy restaurant probably isn’t the

way these “out-of-town” hives choose to spend their time and money. Same’s thing true for a

New York hive that wouldn’t reward a French restaurant that might do just great in Paris.

All of which is a very fancy way of saying, “If the hive doesn’t want it, you picked the wrong

hive.”

Selecting a hive that respects the core value of your virus is a critical first step in laying the

foundation for promoting the idea. College students want something different from

gardeners, who are quite different from computer geeks. Targeting everyone is a sure path to

failure.

Of course, the real reason you want to pick the right hive is not because their values match

the benefits of your product. It’s because when you pick the right hive (and a small enough

hive) you have a chance of overwhelming it—of pumping so much positive juice into your

digital word of mouth that you really do dominate, that so many sneezers are recommending

you to the rest of the hive that the majority surrenders and the entire hive converts.

Once your idea starts coursing through a hive again and again and again, you’ll have a piling

on effect. People will want to be exposed to your idea just because everyone else in the hive

they respect is talking about it.

The mistake that’s so easy to make is to get greedy as you choose your hive, to say, “this

product is for everyone” or “anyone can benefit from this idea.” Well, there are seven billion

people on the planet, so it’s unlikely your comment is correct; even if it is, there’s little

chance that a virus would spread across a hive that big.

Far better to pick smaller hives and conquer them a few at a time. Far better to identify

consumers when they’re grouped in bunches (at a trade show, say, or geographically) and

then allow the concentrated essence of your virus spread to other hives.

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Coors did this with beer years ago. You could only get Coors in Colorado, then you could

only get it west of the Mississippi. By concentrating their marketing dollars, they addressed a

smaller hive. This enabled them to get a larger percentage of the hive to sample the product.

This core group then had a smooth way to spread the word, and it quickly conquered one

state after another.

Without any effort from the Coors people, the virus spread to the East Coast. Coors fielded

thousands of requests from disappointed drinkers who wanted to try this new beer they’d

heard about, but couldn’t.

Coors dominated a hive. Then they went national to try to fulfill the demand created when

their hive spread the word. Unfortunately, the new hive was so large, it turned out to be

difficult to satisfy and dominate.

Compare the powerful, nearly effortless spread of their idea with the challenges they face

today. As a national brand in a stagnant market, growth by any method is hard to come by.

They built their company on a unique virus, but they couldn’t continue to grow their

company the same way.

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Velocity

Napster is a worldwide file sharing database that lets Internet users share MP3 files. In

essence, you can listen to the digital record collection of millions of other people. The idea

behind Napster turned into a virus and grew like crazy. Why?

They hit college campuses—a hotbed of communication. A virus can spread across a campus

in a matter of hours. When a dear friend of mine went to Tufts in the late 1970s his

roommate started a rumor that Paul McCartney had died (this was before John Lennon’s

tragic death—they weren’t that callous). Within an hour, they started hearing the rumor

back—from friends of friends of friends who couldn’t precisely remember where or how

they’d heard it.

Napster was spread the same way. How? Because in addition to being on a college campus,

Napster lives on the Internet. So, instead of being word of mouth as in the Paul McCartney

example, it was digitally augmented word of mouth. On college campuses, everyone has

email, and email is both instantaneous and amplified. You can send an email to thirty or

forty friends as easily as you can write to one. So once a powerful sneezer had tried the

software and confirmed that it worked as advertised, the word spread fast.

Why is velocity so important? Remember, filling a vacuum is far easier than going second. If

the velocity of a virus isn’t fast enough, a competitor may leapfrog past you into a new hive

before you can get there, dominating as the “original” in that market.

This happened with beer, in which regional favorites have long survived the introduction of

nationwide refrigerated delivery. It even happened with the college entrance exams, in which

the ACT is favored in the Midwest, years after the SAT became the standard almost

everywhere else in the world. The only reason this happened is that the ACT got to the

Midwest first.

How does the Net change our economy so dramatically? Because it dramatically increases the

velocity of viruses in various hives. Where it used to take weeks or months for a contractor to

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talk with suppliers before building an office tower, he can now do it in just a day using the

Net.

This increase in velocity fundamentally changes the dynamic of a virus. Something

newsworthy might have 20 or 30 or 100 cycles of communications before the issue itself

becomes boring. In the days before the Net, if each cycle only touched one or two or three

people, the virus would die before it got old. Today, these cycles allow the virus to mutate

and evolve as it touches millions of people.

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Vector

Richard Dawkins, a brilliant evolutionary theorist, had his own word for the phenomenon

I’m calling ideaviruses: memes. He pointed out that a meme was like a living organism,

surviving not in the real world, but in our world of ideas.

Like a real organism, memes could live and die, and more important, they could evolve.

Every time a meme is passed from person to person, it gets touched, changed

and—sometimes—improved.

Once a meme has been passed around enough, it ceases to evolve as quickly and just becomes

a building block for future memes. Pop singers are experts at stringing together memes and

turning them into concise snapshots of our lives. (Paul Simon is a favorite—Graceland,

Kodachrome, the pop charts… you get the idea).

One of the behaviors noticed by Dawkins and practiced by anyone who markets with

ideaviruses is that memes follow a vector. An idea doesn’t spread evenly and nicely through a

population. Instead, people are more likely to send it in one direction instead of another.

At college, there was always someone who knew where the good parties were (and which

ones to avoid). In your town, there’s someone who just seems to have the inside buzz on

which restaurants are hot. On the Internet, some people seem to be on the vector of the

latest email joke, while others—even in the same company or the same cliques—just don’t

seem to get touched as often.

When you create an idea and lay the groundwork for it to become a virus, it pays to study

the vector you’d like it to follow. Why? Because there’s plenty you can do to influence its

vector, and the vector you choose will have a lot to do with who “gets” the virus. The vector

controls the hives through which the idea flows.

If you’re on the Net, for example, the barriers you erect will influence your vector. If your

site needs Shockwave and Flash and a high-bandwidth connection, you’re not likely to vector

straight into the heart of the AOL user universe, regardless of where you start. If your goal is

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to create a trading card mania among third graders, launching a series of cards available only

at liquor stores isn’t going to enhance the vector, even if you seed the virus by handing the

cards out at the local elementary school.

But this is about more than simple access. Remember, the goal is to market to people and

then get out of the way. So an email joke (which almost anyone with a job in this country

could access at home, at work or at the library) will still find its vector. How? There are three

factors:

1.

Who it starts with. Often, the way we decide which direction to send an idea is based on

where it came from. It’s hard, for example, to bring home a joke from the office. Instead,

we’re more likely to send it straight back into the quadrant of life from which it came.

2.

Who it resonates with . An idea has to have impact to be worth sharing at all, and we’re

much more likely to share that idea with someone whom we believe it will impact as

well. After all, if we spread ideas that don’t go viral, it hurts our reputation as powerful

sneezers. This encompasses the idea of access… I’m not likely to spread an idea if the

recipient doesn’t have the energy or the technology or the resources to get engaged with

it.

3.

What’s easy. The medium drives the spread of ideas more than you might imagine. If I

have to print something out, put it in an envelope and mail it to someone, that virus is

going to stop right there. That’s why TV and the Internet have proven to be such

powerful media for the spread of viruses—they’re easy.

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Medium

Scientists wasted hundreds of years looking for the medium by which light traveled. They

knew it was making it through the vacuum of space, through water and through air, but

without a medium, they couldn’t figure out how it worked.

The medium is probably the most overlooked part of ideavirus planning and construction.

It’s so obvious, we often don’t see it.

In Japan, teenage schoolgirls started and built a craze to billion-dollar proportions. They

continue to line up to use a special kind of photo booth. Here’s how it works: You enter the

photo booth (similar to the old Polaroid ones of our youth), insert a some coins and it takes

your picture.

But, instead of giving you four shots on a strip, it prints out 16 little tiny one-square-inch

images on stickers.

Now, what are you going to do with 16 pictures of yourself on stickers? Obvious—share

them with your friends! As a result, every popular Japanese schoolgirl has an autograph book

loaded with dozens or hundreds of these stickers. Sort of like your high school yearbook

signing ceremony, but on steroids.

A friend of mine, Sam Attenberg, developed and patented this technology in the States. And

while it never became a full-fledged virus in the U.S., it did develop pockets of intense

activity in certain hives. Some machines were turning $70 an hour in sticker business, every

hour on the hour for weeks at a time. In Japan, two companies dominate a multi-billiondollar

industry in Sticker Stations.

So what’s the medium? It’s the person-to-person exchange of stickers. The medium is the key

to the entire virus. Once the first person got the sheet of stickers, the only way she could use

them was by sharing them with 15 friends. But in sharing them, in using the medium

provided, she had to explain where she got them. Boom. Virus spreads.

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PayPal.com is another example of an extremely virulent idea that spread because the medium

was so powerful. PayPal.com is an online service that allows customers of eBay—and other

auction site—customers to transfer money online safely and securely. Now, when you pay

for something you buy on eBay, you can just PayPal.com your money to the person.

Here, the medium is the money. People care a lot about money, and since, in this case, it

solves a time-consuming problem (sending checks and waiting for them to clear), it’s

particularly welcome. And, just as we saw in the Sticker Station example, the act of using the

medium causes us to teach others about the idea.

In both cases, a focus on the medium led to the ultimate success of the virus.

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SMOOTHNESS: It Would All Be Easy If We Had Gorgons

The goal, of course, is to have an ideavirus so smooth that once someone is exposed to it,

they are instantly hooked. A virus so powerful that all it takes is one guitar lick on the radio,

one phrase in a book review, one glimpse of a website and you completely and totally “get

it.” And not only do you get it, but you want it. Now and forever.

One of the talents of the great Steve Jobs is that he knows how to design Medusa-like

products. While every Macintosh model has had flaws (some more than others), most of

them have had a sexiness and a design sensibility that has turned many consumers into

instant converts. Macintosh owners upgrade far more often than most computer users for

precisely this reason. We have to own that new flat panel display. We must have the new

color of iBook.

Vindigo is Medusa-like in the way the virus spreads so smoothly. It only takes one look at a

friend’s Palm in order to get hooked (and one file beaming to get it forever). The Nextel

phone has that power, and so (for some people) does Britney Spears.

Alas, it’s not going to happen for you. While you can aspire to make your product more

Medusa-like, it’s a mistake to spend all your time wishing for it to happen. The odds are long

indeed, especially if your product is not groundbreaking. The longer it takes someone to get

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the basic concept behind your idea, the less Medusa-like it is. But often, that’s a good thing.

Real change, and the profit that goes with it, often comes from unsettling ideas that

significantly alter the way people interact with each other and with your company. And those

ideas aren’t as smooth as some others.

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Persistence

In our quest for the quick hit, the easy way to start a business or just to increase our power as

sneezers, there’s a real desire for a shallow virus. A joke. A gimmick. A neat new technology

geegaw that won’t be around tomorrow.

Laser pointers are a fine example. I was in a meeting last month where the presenter used a

laser pointer to highlight various things on his deathly boring Powerpoint slides.

Unfortunately for me, not only was the presentation boring, but he kept aiming the laser at

the TV monitor, which reflected this highly focused electromagnetic radiation right at my

face, hitting me in the eye a few times. I finally got him to turn the thing off, but not

without considerable struggle.

Other than this unfortunate incident, I can’t remember how many years ago it was that I saw

someone actually using one of these pointers.

What happened was that the pointer came out, and for a few early adopters, it felt

marvelous. It touched a Jungian need in us (especially men, I think) to have a magic stick

that could project our thoughts on the wall. Of course, the best place to use one was in a

meeting of other nerds. And all the other nerds noticed the laser pointer and a virus was

spread.

But after we all went out and bought laser pointers, we discovered that they weren’t

particularly useful. After all, how much information could one really have to present that we

needed a high-tech device to point out the good stuff from the bad?

So the lasers ended up in a drawer.

In other words, the virus wasn’t persistent. Those who resisted the initial temptation to rush

out and buy a laser pointer stopped being exposed to them, and the virus died off.

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Compare this to the Palm virus. Every day, somebody else marches into your office,

declaring their undying love and devotion to his new pocket wonder. And unlike laser

pointers, people who love them keep using them. They persist.

In Gladwell’s terms, the Palm has now tipped in certain hives. So many people are using it so

often that you’re constantly reminded that unless you get one, you’re a loser. It’s the

persistence of the Palm more than any other viral factor that has led to its success.

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Amplifier

Word of mouth by itself isn’t enough. As discussed earlier, unamplified word of mouth dies

off too soon to be much good to the average business. The goal of a marketer creating an

ideavirus is to create a system that allows the positive word of mouth to be amplified (and

the negative to be damped!).

This simple idea is behind the success of Planetfeedback.com. It’s impossible for me to

understand why any business invited by Planetfeedback to participate would hesitate for even

a moment before signing up.

If a consumer has a complaint or a compliment about a company, she can go to

Planetfeedback and turn it into a letter to the company. Then, with a click, she can have a

copy of the email go to the relevant congressmen, media and regulatory agencies. Another

click can send a copy of the letter to the consumer’s ten closest friends and co-workers.

Instant amplification.

Now, if your company is the target of a complaint, which course of action makes sense? You

could either proactively grab the opportunity to stamp out a negative virus, to turn the

complainer from an angry reporter of bad news into a now-satisfied witness to how much

your company cares, or you could ignore them and hope they’ll go away. Of course, they

won’t go away. They—and the people already infected—will continue to amplify the

message.

Planetfeedback is providing a great service to all parties involved. By taking previously

invisible word of mouth and aggregating it, they’re making it far easier for companies to

understand the viruses that are already being spread, and they’re giving them an opportunity

to do something about them. And yes, they are viruses—ideas that are running amok, being

passed from person to person. At the same time, Planetfeedback gives consumers far more

power, and makes it easier for them to get attention.

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Of course, you don’t have to sponsor Planetfeedback. Some day they may offer a different

program… or your competitors can pay to talk to your unhappy customers instead of you.

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SECTION 4: Case Studies and Riffs

STEAL THIS IDEA!

Here’s what you can do to spread the word about Unleashing the Ideavirus:

1. Send this file to a friend (it’s sort of big, so ask first).

2. Send them a link to http://www.ideavirus.com so they can download it themselves.

3. Visit http://www.fastcompany.com/ideavirus to read the Fast Company article.

4. Buy a copy of the hardcover book at

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0970309902/permissionmarket.

5. Print out as many copies as you like.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 104 http://www.ideavirus.com

The Vindigo Case Study

One of the best examples of a company unleashing an ideavirus is Vindigo. You can find

them at vindigo.com on the web, and you’ll need a Palm (or something compatible) to use

the software.

Vindigo is a directory of restaurants, entertainment venues and stores in major U.S. cities.

You download it to your Palm and carry it with you. Tell it where you’re standing (in the

illustration above, you’re on the corner of Amsterdam and Broadway in New York City), and

it will show you whatever sort of restaurant or fun you’re looking for. Sorted by distance

from where you are. With ratings. For free.

What a killer app! I need to tell everyone. This is why they invented handheld computers!

IT’S SO COOL!

But, while that alone is grounds for this to become an ideavirus, as described it doesn’t seem

particularly smooth. After all, after a sneezer tells you about this cool software, you’ve got to

remember the name (vindaloo? indigo?), go home, type it into your browser, download it,

synchronize it, etc. A disaster. No way it’s going to work.

Which is where the smooth part comes in. You see, right on the bottom, underneath the

buttons for eating, shopping and entertainment, is a button that says “give.”

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So, when a sneezer is going on and on and on about how cool this is, you just take out your

Palm, they take out their Palm, press the give button and sixty seconds later the entire product

is now on your Palm!

That’s smooth. It’s about as close to perfect smoothness as you can get.

It goes beyond smooth. It’s persistent. The next time you synchronize your Palm with your

PC, it will automatically upload all the ratings you’ve put into the computer and get you an

updated version. Instantly. Automatically.

The ideavirus has stuck.

Is it working? Well, the folks at Vindigo seeded just 100 sneezers with the original version of

the program. Then they spent virtually nothing on advertising and waited to see if the virus

would spread. It’s now the fastest-growing application on the Palm.

Note that this isn’t viral marketing in the sense that Hotmail is. You can happily use Vindigo

for months without mentioning its existence to a friend. Vindigo works really well, but it

also happens to be optimized for spreading the ideavirus.

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Saving The World With An Ideavirus

The Prius is a new car from Toyota. And it’s the only car that’s ever won an award from the

Sierra Club. This is the car that’s supposed to save us from ourselves, to take a whack out of

the greenhouse effect and to conserve our remaining fossil fuels.

How? By using an engine that’s a hybrid of gasoline and electricity. By getting more than 90

miles to the gallon, giving very good performance and emitting close to zero pollution. I

dearly hope it succeeds. THIS CAR IS IMPORTANT!

Unfortunately, because Toyota is a factory-based company that uses ideas (instead of being

an idea company that owns factories) they’ve built the product completely backwards. I’m

confident that someday everybody is going to be driving a car as positive for the world as the

Prius, but it won’t be because of the way this car is marketed.

Let’s start with the name. How can you tell someone about a car you’re excited about if you

don’t know how to pronounce it? Is it pry-us, or is it pree-us? I don’t want to feel stupid, so I

just won’t say the name.

Second, is there a smooth way for me to spread the word? A visit to the Toyota website

doesn’t even show the Prius on the home page, and when I search for it, I get a very nice

page. But where’s the “tell a friend” button? How can I set up a test drive? Is there a place for

me to give my email address so I can give permission to get information on when the car is

going to be available in my neighborhood? Alas, no on all three counts.

What about a community activism component with teenagers going door to door with

petitions, hoping to lobby the local government to buy Prius police cars? Or letter-writing

campaigns that spring up from grassroots environmental organizations around the

country…?

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But the biggest mistake Toyota made was the way they designed the car. Unlike the VW

Beetle and the Mazda Miata, the Prius is not a driving billboard for itself. Here’s what it

looks like:

You could have 1,000 of these cars drive by and you’d never, ever notice it. You wouldn’t

notice the styling, you wouldn’t notice the gas mileage or the lack of emissions—and you

certainly wouldn’t aspire to own one just by looking at it.

Is Toyota on a mission from God? Are they acting like zealots, aggressively pushing a car that

will change the world for the better, the most powerful idea to come out of the car industry

since Henry Ford perfected the assembly line? We need passion from our manufacturers.

What a lost opportunity! An idea merchant in search of a virus would take a very different

tack. Instead of trying to make it cheap and boring, they’d realize that the first people to buy

a car like this are people with money to risk on an unproven technology. Realize that the

opinion leaders and nerds who are most susceptible to this idea are also the most likely to

want to drive an exceptional car.

I’d redesign the thing to be stunning. Different. Unique. Maybe a permanent bumper sticker

announcing my current gas mileage on an LCD readout. Or a fleet of far-out colors. The

first 50,000 people who buy this car will be doing it to make a statement. And every person

who does will be making that statement to the 1,000 or 10,000 people who see them driving

it. A virus waiting to happen.

Remember what I said about the VW Beetle? 180° difference.

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Toyota forgot to pick a vector for this car. They don’t know exactly who they want to buy it,

so they designed it for everyone. Precisely the opposite strategy of the new VW Bug. But

remember, an ideavirus adores a vacuum, and there is a very big and very empty vacuum just

sitting here, waiting to be plucked. Toyota could have picked any vector they wanted,

leading to any hive they chose, and yet they chose none.

And finally, I wouldn’t let just anyone buy the first models off the line. I’d select the very

best sneezers, the loudmouths, the pillars in their community and do whatever it took to get

these folks to drive a car. James Bond? Julia Roberts in her next film? The mayor of Carmel,

California or the head of Greenpeace?

This is urgent. This isn’t about making another few million bucks from a website. It’s about

infecting the population with a good virus, and doing it before the vacuum fills up with junk

and it’s too noisy to communicate about it.

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Is UNLEASHING THE IDEAVIRUS An Ideavirus?

Here is the step by step plan I’m using to turn this manifesto into an ideavirus:

1.

Describe something important and cool and neat and useful and new, and do it in

compelling, clear and exciting words.

2.

Launch the virus to the largest audience of sneezers I can find. In this case, that means

the readership of Fast Company. Do it with graphic splash and panache and impact.

3.

Make it smooth. Post the entire manifesto at http://www.ideavirus.com. Include commentary

from big-name authors, pundits and industry professionals. Include the entire text of not

just the manifesto but the entire book. Make it easy to send the book to a friend. Include

an audio version of the book. Include my powerpoint slides. All for free.

4.

Run ads to create an environment in which sneezers feel comfortable spreading the

manifesto to others.

5.

Maintain the virus as it grows by doing speaking engagements and distributing free

copies of the hard-copy version of the manifesto to appropriate sneezers.

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Moving Private To Public

One of the challenges facing oldline companies as the ideavirus becomes more important is

that they’re used to providing private services. Your friends and acquaintances probably have

no idea what brand of PC you have, whether you have gas or oil heat, how often you see the

chiropractor or what your favorite kind of wine is.

Because of the private nature of these relationships, the only way to expand the market for

them is for the marketer to spend more money and interrupt more people with more junk

ads. BUT, if they can figure out how to make them public, if they can figure out how to

launch an ideavirus, the whole equation changes.

Here’s an example: your frequent flyer miles.

American Airlines has made a fortune using frequent flyer miles to induce loyalty, and just as

important, to establish a currency that they sell to other companies.

But none of your friends really knows your frequent flyer habits. You almost never talk about

them unless something exceptional happens that you want to brag about… like buying

tickets for the whole family to fly to France with your miles.

There are a number of things that American Airlines can do to move miles out of the closet

and turn them into an ideavirus. For instance, they could allow people to buy, sell or trade

their miles. Would this lead to more mileage redemptions (a bad thing)? Sure. But it would

also turn miles back into a nationwide fascination.

Far more clever would be to make the following announcement at a convention jammed

with business travelers: “If you can find someone at this convention who has precisely the

same number of miles as you do, we’ll give you both a million miles.” Suddenly, every

person you meet wants to talk to you about your mileage status.

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Hakuhodo, one of the largest ad agencies in Japan, used a similar approach and turned it

into a national craze. It seems that sending New Year’s cards is a big deal in Japan…much

bigger than Christmas cards.

Most people buy their cards at the post office—envelope and stamp included. When you

send a card, it comes with a lottery ticket, good for a small prize if the recipient wins (a

bicycle, a radio, etc.).

Hakuhodo runs their promotion on the Net. And the cards are free to send (no stamps, no

fee). But the best part is that if the person you’re writing to wins, you win the same prize. So,

the more you send, the happier your friends are, and of course, the happier you are.

Not only did this promotion go viral, it turned into an epidemic. In 1998, 25% of the

people with Net access in Japan either sent or received one of Hakuhodo’s cards. And

Hakuhodo cashed out by selling ads in each and every one of those cards.

In order to turn these public ideaviruses into useful, long-term assets, the companies that

create them need to gain permission from people to follow up directly. Then, they go back to

private marketing, at a very low cost, with excellent results, until they’re ready to go public

again with another virus.

Of course, going public doesn’t mean you have to run a selfishly oriented promotion. When

I was in college, the gay and lesbian center ran a campus-wide activity called “Wear jeans on

Wednesday if you’re gay.” Suddenly, something that had been a private topic was now the

topic of discussion among everyone. If you weren’t wearing jeans, was that because you were

afraid that people thought you were gay? Is there something wrong with being seen as gay,

whether you were or not?

One simple act turned the notion of sexual preference into an ideavirus and generated

thousands of hours of intense discussions about how society (and how we) viewed the issue.

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YouÕre In The Fashion Business!

Without question, the most difficult part of unleashing a manifesto is creating something

that’s virusworthy. And one of the key components of that art is understanding the fashion

moment.

Why do open-toed shoes come and go? Bell-bottoms? Miniskirts?

How is it that every year, multiple clothing designers launch very similar clothes, without

consulting with each other in advance?

Source: Corbis

Why is it that we rarely see people dressed like the two women above? Did these folks wake

up one morning and go out and buy the entire outfit at once, or did it happen gradually?

Why do some Internet businesses (group scheduling, free email, health portals) seem to

appear simultaneously, even though it took them months or years to launch?

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The fashion moment occurs when a respected hive member takes a chance and tries out

something new.

One of two things occurs when a hive member shows up with a new “outfit”:

1.

The hive embraces the new. They start wearing a nose ring or get a tatoo or switch from

using a Filofax to using a Palm. When this occurs, the respected member gets MORE

respect, becomes more influential and reinforces his position as a powerful sneezer.

2.

The hive rejects the new. Many times, the person who introduces the new item will be

ignored or ridiculed (this happens more to the less-respected members of the hive, but it

happens to everyone sooner or later). When this happens, the person who tried to

introduce the new fashion loses respect, becomes less influential and is usually less likely

to try again in the near future.

Obviously, respected members are hesitant to lose their positions of influence, hence the

consistency and uniformity among hives.

Some hives are incredibly conservative (go to the Assocation of American Actuaries annual

meeting and you won’t see an awful lot of surprising new innovation), while others are

known for their daring (the trends demonstrated on the New York City nightclub scene

oscillate like the NASDAQ).

Some people—I call them fashion editors—seem to have an innate sense for knowing when a

hive is ready to adopt a new virus. Successful venture capitalists, journalists, chefs, research

and development labs and record label executives are great fashion editors.

Clive Davis at Arista Records was a stellar fashion editor in the music business for

generations. He launched dozens of breakthrough acts… from Aretha Franklin to Whitney

Houston, Carlos Santana to Patti Smith. The only thing they had in common was that they

were just right for their time. A month earlier or a month later and they might never have

succeeded. (Well, maybe Aretha would have succeeded no matter what…)

But no fashion editor is infallible, and if they’re not careful, they fall into one of two traps:

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They lose touch with the hive and fall in love with their own taste. Without the feedback loop

the hive provides, they “lose their touch.” Someone who had a seemingly hot hand starts

failing.

Warren Buffet is a brilliant stock market investor with an extraordinary ability to understand

what other people are going to want to invest in. But when Internet mania started to hit the

stock market, Buffet lost his ability to predict what the hive would predict. I think he DID

know, but overruled his sense of what would happen with his own common sense. Buffet left

billions of dollars of profit on the table because he refused to believe that the Internet stock

ideavirus would spread across the hive of investors.

They stop thinking of themselves as fashion editors and start to believe that they are fashion

makers. Rather than acting like someone who has a sense as to what virus will hit the hive

next, they believe that they are respected enough by the hive to FORCE them to accept the

next virus.

Fashion designers are famous for this, as are rock groups, authors and product marketers.

Take a look at New Coke—the biggest flaw in the introduction of this product was that

Coke believed that if they willed the consumer to adopt a new formula, the consumer would

do as they were told. Instead of spreading like a virus from a respected hive member, they

tried to ram the formula for New Coke on the hive. The hive rejected it.

The challenge your business faces is finding or training a fashion editor. Launching products

too early is just as bad as launching them too late—if you miss the timing, you fail to fill the

vacuum with your virus. Miss the timing and the profit belongs to someone with better

timing and better fashion sense than you.

To those dedicated to the idea that your business is a factory, all this must sound like heresy.

After all, if you wanted to go into the fashion business, you’d have gone into the fashion

business! But, like it or not, we’re all in the fashion business.

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A few years ago, there was plenty of cherry wood to go around. People weren’t making much

furniture out of it… it wasn’t in style. Then a furniture designer named Thomas Moser

decided that his fashion sense was telling him that cherry wood would make a comeback.

That once people saw how beautiful the wood was, the idea of furnishing your house in this

warm, comfortable wood would spread through his chosen hive.

Moser built an entire company around cherry wood furniture, and bought thousands of acres

of prime cherry in anticipation of demand. Today, Thomas Moser has grown more than

30% a year for the last ten years, with showrooms in New York and overseas selling $5,000

tables and $3,000 chairs. Not because the furniture is great (which it is) but because he

created a fashion that resonated with his hive, because he launched an ideavirus.

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The Money Paradox

The sooner you ask for money, the less you’ll make.

The single biggest mistake idea merchants make is that they ask for money too soon. On one

hand, you want to charge early and often, so you don’t waste time on people who are just

looking, and so you can maximize your income before your idea fades. “Take the money and

run” is a cliché for a reason.

But this strategy introduces friction into the system. Many marketers require people to pay

the most when they know the least. For example, why don’t movie studios run a day of free

sneak previews to get the virus started, and then charge more once everyone wants to see the

movie? Today, if you want to taste a new movie, you’ve got to pay $8 for the privilege.

On the Internet, dozens of new businesses have discovered how important this model is. A

company called eFax offers a service that lets you get faxes delivered to your email box. They

launched it as a totally free service. Why? Because it’s scary enough to be one of the first

people to try something as flaky as eliminating your fax machine. And it’s even scarier to pay

money for the privilege as well…

So eFax has a plan: get people hooked on a free system. Build an ideavirus. Then upgrade

people to a paid system that offers all sorts of extras.

1. Fill the vacuum

2. Achieve lock-in

3. Extract revenue

They can fill the vacuum by getting in first and furious and spreading the virus. They can

achieve lock-in by making it hard for people to switch to a competitor (what a hassle to keep

changing your fax number!). And finally, they can extract revenue by offering value-added

services or selling advertising.

In that order!

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Will eFax be guaranteed an easy upgrade path to paying customers? I have no idea. Some

businesses (like email) will be stuck at FREE forever, thus making the whole journey hard to

justify. In this case, they could offer free faxes with an eight-hour delay before you get them,

but for $5 a month, you get the faxes instantly. So it’s free for me to try out, free to spread,

but profitable after lock-in is achieved.

The challenge, of course, is to figure out which businesses have a payoff at the end. The

challenge is also to be patient enough to wait, to introduce the friction of charging at just the

right moment.

Watts Wacker catapulted his career by writing The 500 Year Delta. After the book came out,

people started to hand it around, to embrace his ideas. This led to larger audiences and a

dramatic increase in bookings for speaking engagements. In a few months, I’m confident he

made more in speaking fees than he had from royalties on the book. By letting the ideavirus

grow before trying to extract much profit, he was able to make more money in the end.

In very transparent markets like the Internet, the fear is that all ideaviruses will be so

competitive that you’ll never be able to extract money. That’s why the race to fill the vacuum

is so intense. If you can fill the vacuum aggressively and permanently, it is far easier to extract

money.

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Think Like A Music Executive (Sometimes)

There are plenty of lessons you can learn about viruses from folks in the music industry

(current behavior notwithstanding, but more on that later).

First, industry executives realize that nobody buys a CD because they like the quality of the

polycarbonate disc. If you don’t like the idea of the music, you’re not going to buy it.

Second, they realize that making money later is way more important than making money

now. They learned this the hard way. Consider radio for a second. Before radio, music sales

were tiny. Why would you buy a song for your Victrola if you’d never heard it before? How

could you know if it was any good?

At first, radio might seem like a threat to the recorded music industry. After all, they play the

ENTIRE song, not just a few notes. And if it’s a hit song, you can hear it night and day on

the radio every few minutes if you’re so inclined.

For a while, the music business fought the idea of radio stations playing songs for little or no

compensation. Then, in the 1950s, they realized how valuable airplay was—so valuable that

a congressional inquiry discovered that music labels were bribing disk jockeys to play their

records.

Fast forward a few decades to MTV. Once again, the music labels balked at supporting

MTV’s insistence that they provide expensively produced music videos—for free! It took a

year or two for them to discover that MTV made hits—that giving away the music for free

turned out to be the best way to sell the music.

Music execs know that you’ll pay nothing to hear a song on the radio, but if you like it,

you’ll gladly pay $15 for the CD. And that if you love the CD, you’re more likely to pay $40

for tickets to the local concert, where you might be converted to a raving sneezer, much more

likely to infect your friends and neighbors with raves about the band, the song, even the

souvenirs!

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For some reason, history is repeating itself. Rather than embracing Napster, the software that

lets millions of people listen to each other’s CD collections, music moguls, fronted by the

hard rock band Metallica, are once again complaining about the free distribution model.

Even if the record companies are able to beat Napster in court (a likely outcome) it won’t

matter. There are already dozens of technologies (like gnutella) waiting to take its place, and

each will be harder to stamp out than the one before.

Patience! Instead of hassling Napster, they ought to figure out how to license Napster and

the others, probably in exchange for intensive promotion of their hottest acts. Why not let

me subscribe to my favorite bands, paying for live performances or attending private concerts

or buying T-shirts. I’m certain that if the Grateful Dead were still around, their primary

income source would be souvenirs, followed closely by live concerts. Is that what the record

companies want? Doesn’t matter. It’s what the network is going to deliver, regardless of how

they feel.

Is the CD going to disappear? Absolutely, regardless of what happens to Napster. What will

determine the future of the record business is whether music execs are able to redefine their

jobs around what happens after they ignite a virus over Napster or its successor.

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Is That Your Final Answer?

When a sneezer is ready to spread your ideavirus, what should he say?

It sounds like a simple, almost silly question, but it goes to the core of how smooth you can

make your virus. If you give sneezers easy-to-follow, effective instructions, they’re likely to

follow them, because, after all, their goal is to spread the virus.

On “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” the producers insist that Regis Philbin repeat the

catchphrase, “Is that your final answer?” almost to distraction. But now it’s become a

powerful, smooth tool for sneezers who want to spread the virus. I must have heard the

phrase fifty times and read it in dozens of newspaper columns before I saw the show for the

first time.

By giving loyal watchers a five-word catchphrase, the producers created (intentionally or not)

a powerful shorthand for referencing the show. Hotmail did the same thing with the sig file

in the free email each person sent. Right there at the bottom of each email, with no

additional work on the part of the sneezer, were specific instructions on how to get Hotmail.

Buffalo Springfield and the Beatles did the same thing with some of their songs. It took just a

few notes—an investment by the listener of seconds, not minutes—for them to expose their

“idea” to a new listener. By working so hard on the first chords of the song, pop music

producers (and Beethoven for that matter) made their products far smoother. It’s easier to

share the song when you can hum the riff.

For most ideas, the web can be a powerful tool to help with this. What might a website for

sneezers look like?

The first touch, the first impression and first visit, must go beautifully. It’s got to be fast.

It should contain exactly what you’ve tested and discovered that most effectively captures the

attention of the first time-visitor. You’re in control in this moment, and you can make it

work or not.

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The site should also be filled with tools that make it really easy for a visitor to become a

sneezer. Get out of the way. Give the sneezer something to share. Do like Tom Peters (at

http://www.tompeters.com) and include all your Powerpoint slides. Don’t require registration or

permission at this stage. Let them in, sell them on the idea, then give them the (free) tools to

share.

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A Dozen ideaviruses Worth Thinking About

Company Big idea How you spread the virus (the

medium)

Polaroid Instant photography “HEY! Look at this,” you say at

the party.

Tupperware The best food storage devices Get your friends to sell their

friends—multi-level marketing

Fax machine Documents delivered by phone The more you sell to your

business associates, the better

your machine works.

Home Shopping Network Shopping via cable TV “Hey Madge! Look what’s on

Home Shopping,” you say to

your friends on the phone.

Fast Company Journal of the new economy Company of Friends—monthly

meetings of local fans of the

magazine.

CarmineÕs Restaurant Tons of food, tons of garlic Six-person minimum for

reservations—you need to sell

your friends to get in.

Beany Babies Collectible teddy bears If other people start collecting,

your collection increases in

value.

Gamesville Super sticky games on the web Word of mouse—email your

friends and invite them over.

Hotmail Free email Totally viral…every mail you

send promotes it.

Tommy Hilfiger Urban preppy chic Logo virus—the more you wear

the logo, the more people see it.

ÒThe Cathedral and the

BazaarÓ

Open source programming

works

Enabling powerful web sneezers

to spread the word by giving

them a powerful manifesto they

can share.

Vindigo Zagats on my Palm “Give it to me,” and a friend

can beam it over in seconds.

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Why I Love Bestseller Lists

One of the critical moments in the spread of an ideavirus is the question the consumer asks

before diving in: “Is it worth my time/money?”

Of course, your recommendation is important to me. Of course, I want to look as good as

you, be as smart as you, have as much fun as you. But I also care desperately about everyone

else’s opinion. After all, none of us is as smart as all of us!

The most common way this popularity is reinforced is that the user will hear about a new

ideavirus from more than one person. Usually, we hear about something first from a

promiscuous sneezer, someone who has some sort of benefit from making the

recommendation, or at the least, someone who’s always recommending stuff. We all know

somebody who eats out every night or listens to every CD or is into whatever bizarre

conspiracy theory has gripped insomniacs this week.

But then, sometimes we hear about the same ideavirus from someone else. And then another

person. Finally, we realize that something is really going on, and we investigate.

In the real world, these reinforcements are usually caused by sightings or physical

interactions. Riding through the New York subway last year, I encountered a kid wearing

what appeared to be a black stocking on his head. But along the hem were the words,

“Tommy Hilfilger.” It seemed like an odd affectation and I let it go.

A week later, I saw four more Hilfiger skull caps. In the week after that, a dozen. If I were in

search of genuine urban chic, I certainly would have bought one at that point, if only to

protect my trademark bald pate from the winter chill.

The same thing happened with the VW Beetle. First there was one in my neighborhood (a

yellow one) and then a few, and then a dozen. With all these reinforcements, I assumed that

it was now a safe thing to consider, and went to the dealer to have a look for myself.

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Online, the rules are very different. There is no physical world to bump into. Instead (and

even better for the statistician in each of us), there are actual digital counters and accurate, up

to the minute bestseller lists. No guessing. No inferences. The real scoop.

Amazon.com has a bestseller list more than a million titles long. Visit any title and you can

see where it stands compared to every single other title in the world. Wow. Now we instantly

understand what’s hot and what’s not.

MP3.com has done the same thing with music. As a track gets played more and more often,

it moves up their digital bestseller list. And yes, Zipf’s law works here too—the topmost

tunes are downloaded far often more than those just below them.

We use the same math when we look at the MediaMetrix list of the most visited websites, or

Variety’s tally of the weekly box office numbers (some people saw “Titanic” just because it

seemed that everyone else was). Various organizations also track bestselling cars, bestselling

vodka and highest-paid executives.

One of the best ways to facilitate adoption of your ideavirus is to find a bestseller list that

makes sense and then dominate it. If that’s impossible, figure out how to create your own

bestseller list and popularize that!

This isn’t just conjecture. A breakthrough paper by Stanford Business School professor Kirk

Hanson demonstrated this in a really profound way. His team artificially boosted the

bestseller status of files for download on the web (they downloaded one file over and over

again, increasing the counter of how often it had been downloaded). The result? Heavily

downloaded files get downloaded more often! Nothing was changed but the counter, but

users were more interested in seeing the most popular files. Simple, but true.

Want to launch a new drink using your company’s chi-chi liquer? Why not identify the right

bar, frequented by powerful sneezers in the hive you’re targeting. Then pay the bar to post a

“bestselling drinks list.” Now, bribe enough folks to go in and buy themselves a drink. Soon,

you’ll see your drink climbing the bestselling drinks list, and this alone ought to be enough

to get other—less easily bribed drinkers—to give it a try.

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Of course, sampling doesn’t always lead to the spreading of a virus, but without sampling,

you’ve got no chance, do you?

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How A Parody Of Star Wars Outsold Star Wars

According to USA Today, a parody called George Lucas In Love is currently outselling the

new Star Wars movie on video on Amazon. How is this possible? How can mighty

Twentieth Century Fox be beat by a nine-minute, $8 handmade film?

Because the parody is an ideavirus. And because the medium of the Net is the perfect place

for the word to spread.

In the old days, if you made a movie, you needed movie theaters across the country to show

it. That’s way outside the reach of an entrepreneur, regardless of how clever his movie is.

Videotape leveled the playing field a bit (Blockbuster can carry hundreds or thousands of

titles) but it’s still very difficult, time-consuming and expensive to force your way into

nationwide distribution.

But Amazon is a different story. Amazon prides itself on carrying just about everything. Since

they don’t have to carry much inventory, Amazon doesn’t take much of a risk by listing a

title. And the entrepreneur can certainly find his tape listed along with the thousands of

others available.

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So distribution is the easy part. But how to spread the idea?

Well, the parody fills a vacuum. In this case, the vacuum was “funny and interesting news

about Star Wars.” Certainly, the launch of the videotape was a yawner, the mania about the

film version having largely subsided. Would many people buy the video for their libraries?

No doubt. But it wasn’t news.

But now, here’s an email telling me that someone has seen the funniest little video. It’s

hysterical, my friend says. So I click on over to Amazon (using his affiliate link, I notice—he

may be a powerful sneezer, but he’s also making a profit on this virus). There, I note more

than 100 reviews, all of them positive. I see that it’s a bestseller. I realize that there’s almost

no risk here, certainly worth ten bucks and a few minutes of my time. I buy it.

And after I see it, I’ll tell five friends. This time using my affiliate relationship.

A classic ideavirus. Yes, it would have grown faster if the filmmaker had just put the video

online for free, but he was stuck in the mindset of making money now. Yes, the charge and

the wait for shipping definitely slowed the virus down, but at the same time, it was a nice

balancing act—a slightly slower virus in exchange for tens of thousands of dollars (and

probably a contract for a real movie from a studio).

If it were me, I probably would have posted a low-resolution excerpt of some of the funny

parts online… it’s going to happen anyway, so the filmmaker might as well do it and thus

control what the sneezers say while also increasing the velocity of the virus.

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Wassup?

I first heard about the Superfriends parody in an email. Apparently, some clever animator

had taken the soundtrack of the ubiquitous Budweiser commercial and replaced the video

portion with Batman, Superman and Aquaman hamming it up and having a few brews.

Clicking on a link (pretty smooth transition from interest to exposure, you’ll notice), I see

that it’s on a reputable site and happens to be one of the most downloaded files (a bestseller

list!).

Soon, I’m laughing out loud. It really is funny. Of course, I’ve got to tell three friends, so I

do. It’s going viral.

A few weeks later, a site launches another Wassup parody. This one uses the AP photo of

Elian Gonzales as the star. But this time, the virus grows far faster, with more than 100,000

people seeing it in less than 24 hours.

Why did it grow so fast? Because everyone who had seen Superfriends and liked it didn’t

need much coaxing to get infected by this one. By tapping into a virus-friendly base, it took

much less effort for the marketer to get the message to spread.

(Of course, this is a paradox, because the ideavirus loves a vacuum. In this case there wasn’t

a vacuum—the Wassup parody was an old joke. So, in order to make an impact, it had to be

fresh and at least as funny. But once it cleared that hurdle, the rest was taken for granted.)

This time, though, the ending of the cycle was very different. The Associated Press fired off a

letter to the site behind the virus, claiming copyright infringement and not interested at all in

the idea of parody and its protection. So the short movie came down.

Inevitably, if you create a piece of digital media that becomes popular, someone is going to

parody it, or at the very least, use it in a way that you’re not delighted with. If your digital

media becomes that popular, odds are you should embrace it, not fight it. Budweiser, for

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example, has wisely let the parody virus spread unfettered. Being parodied online is a

shortcut to burning the Budweiser brand further into our subconscious.

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Judging a book by its cover

No question, a great cover can make or break your book. Kurt Andersen wrote one of the

funniest books I’ve ever read (Turn of the Century) but, by all accounts, it didn’t meet sales

expectations. Why? One reason is the cover, which is one of the worst I’ve ever seen in my

life.

Remember, the search for Medusa is usually a hopeless quest. But just as it’s difficult to sell

someone on your ideavirus with just an image, it’s also nearly impossible to suck them

further in if the image is offputting, inconsistent or boring.

Boring is probably the worst offense. Whether your product is a book, a trading card, a car

or even the tag on a bag of tea, boring is the obvious, but wrong, solution.

You’ve worked very hard on the stuff “inside.” You’ve refined, tested, edited and slaved to

make sure that the idea is powerful indeed. And then it comes time to make the

package—the cover. The prevailing wisdom is to create a cover that’s attractive but not

offensive. Something that will attract attention from everyone and offend no one.

This is nonsense, of course. It can’t possibly attract everyone and offend no one. The very

best cover images are like a cold glass of water thrown in your face. They break one or more

rules of graphic design or industry rules of thumb. They play off existing images but change

them in a vital and important way. They’re loud. They attract the eye, but they also hold it.

And most of all, they intrigue us enough that we need to understand what’s inside: we set

ourselves up to be exposed to the virus.

When Yahoo! first launched, the company name and logo broke every rule in the book. But

co-founder Jerry Yang will be the first to tell you that in a world populated with Lycos,

AltaVista, InfoSeek and Architext/Excite, Yahoo! was the easy winner. Easy to spell. Easy to

type. Easy to tell other people about.

And it had personality. It meant something.

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Was it risky? I don’t think so. A boring, hard to spell, meaningless name like Lycos was risky.

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Being The Most

Turns out there’s been a battle going on for a few years—the battle to make the hottest hot

sauce in the world.

At the beginning, you made a hot sauce by using peppers. Hotter peppers made hotter sauce.

And a sauce made from Scotch Bonnet Peppers (the hottest peppers on Earth) was the

hottest sauce on Earth.

Then, some nutty scientist figured out how to extract just the essence of hotness from Scotch

Bonnet Pepper puree. By using gas chromotagraphy or some other evil technology, he was

able to create a sauce more than 1,000,000 times spicier than your basic pepper.

Why does this matter? Because being the hottest hot sauce ever made is like being the Mona

Lisa. Because if I’ve managed to eat chili with the hottest hot sauce ever made in it, I’m

going to tell my friends. I’m going to spread your hot-sauce virus. If it’s the second or third

hottest, who cares?

There’s always room in any list for the world record holder. The greatest basketball player

who ever lived, or the nastiest restaurant owner, or the fastest computer. It’s noteworthy. It’s

news. It’s worth sharing.

My dad’s hospital crib company dominates the market, making most of the cribs that are

used in hospitals around the world. Their standard models cost $700 to $2,000 each, and

they last forever. How to grow the business? How to get more attention and more sales?

His engineers found a leading hospital, and together they designed the best (and the most

expensive) hospital crib in the world. With all the options, it costs about $7,000. Yet it’s

selling like crazy, from the Philippines to Tuscon. Why? Because it’s worth talking about.

Because it embodies an idea, and it’s an idea worth sharing.

Google.com has plenty of traffic, yet they’ve never spent a nickel on advertising. How?

Because it’s the fastest and most complete search engine ever built. Electronically amplified

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voices—from nerds to magazines—are happy to trumpet the idea that there is a faster, better

way to search than using the tried and true favorites.

As you think about a corporate virus or a personal one, consider: What you are the best or

the most at? How can you refine and amplify those traits to create a Wow! product…a

world’s record holder that is worth mentioning?

And by the way, if you’re not facing a vacuum (and most of us aren’t lucky enough to be in

that position) you’ve got to be ten times better than what’s already there, if you’re going to

start your own virus.

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In Defense Of World Domination

Targeting isn’t enough. Being a world record holder isn’t enough either. You also need to

dominate your hive.

Having 5,000 loyal, rabid fans of your ideavirus is great. Unless, of course, your audience is

the population of Massachusetts. To dominate Massachusetts you need a lot more fans than

that. Without the power of reinforcement, your virus will peter out. Unless individuals are

hearing from sneezers again and again, your virus will slow and will probably die out over

time.

Imagine, instead, that you have 5,000 fans at Stanford University, which is a hive with a

population of about 15,000. The chances that you’ll be exposed to every other member of

the hive is huge. Why? Because if each one of the 5,000 fans tells just a few other people,

you’re already hitting each person more than once. And if the idea is virusworthy, that’s

probably enough to dominate the entire campus. Even the laggards will surrender when they

see everyone else is doing it (even the accounting department at my old company did the

Macarana at the company Christmas party).

Malcolm Gladwell calls this the tipping pointD—the idea that creating and propagating an

ideavirus is not enough. The biggest win comes the last time your virus doubles in size. The

biggest win comes when you’ve so dominated the hive that the last folks (who are often the

most profitable folks) can’t help but come along. They tip because they hear from so many

respected sneezers that they feel they have no choice but to get on the bandwagon.

This happened with AOL. A few years ago, AOL was paying $300 in marketing costs to get

one new member. All those CDs that showed up in every magazine were expensive, but they

were effective.

But how could AOL justify spending $300 to get a member who had a lifetime value of just

$124? Jan Brandt, the genius behind the campaign, realized that if she could win at this

expensive part of the curve, the game would soon turn in her favor. She knew that once she

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got over the hump and dominated the hive of people about to go online, the next generation

of users would come along far cheaper.

She was right. Once AOL established dominance for new users, they established a network of

powerful sneezers. Powerful, because these were folks who until quite recently had been new

users. These once-new, once-lost users had the credibility to spread the word to those just

behind them on the learning curve. They were powerful because they’d been there, and their

personal experience counted for more than any salesperson’s could.

The virus had authority, because every “bestseller” list credited AOL with being far and away

the most popular Internet service provider in the land. Today, someone at Sun City who

until recently had no idea what they were talking about when they said “Internet” could

proudly recommend AOL to the person in the next condo. AOL now spends about $100 in

marketing to get a new member—because their virus tipped.

There’s plenty of interesting action that occurs before the tipping point, though. Viruses

need to spread before they tip, and a smart marketer can be quite happy indeed along the

way.

Dominating the hive is essential in starting the virus in the first place. And most marketers

make the mistake of picking too big a hive to focus on in the first place.

If you go to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, you’ll see one of the largest trade

shows in the world, and you’ll also see hundreds of companies spending millions of dollars

trying to dominate the show. All of them fail. Which is why it’s so rare for a virus to be

launched at the CES. It’s just too noisy, and there are no exciting but safe recommendations

for the most powerful sneezers to make.

The smart marketers take a different path. They launch at Demo or Spotlight or Esther

Dyson’s conference—a much smaller venue, but a higher concentration of powerful sneezers.

Here, for about the same money as making a whisper at CES, you can completely dominate

the discussion.

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If YouÕre A Member Of The Academy, You Go To Movies For Free

If there’s an association of powerful sneezers, it’s the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and

Sciences. This association of actors, screenwriters and directors has celebrated movies every

year for nearly a century, and every year it seems to get more popular and more influential.

If your movie wins an Oscar, you can count on a blip at the box office, and even better, a

long, profitable life on video. And of course, any actor who wins one has a label that will

enhance his career forever.

So, how much do the studios charge Academy members to go to a movie? That’s right,

nothing. Not only that, but the studios are delighted to deliver the latest movies to an

Academy member’s home, on her choice of VHS or DVD.

Why? Why give the movie away? Well, here it should be pretty obvious. The leverage that

comes from building buzz among Academy members more than pays for the cost of sharing

the movie with them. In fact, the benefits are so obvious that studios like Miramax have been

accused of trying to buy the Oscars by throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars of trade

advertising at Academy members.

Well, if this is so obvious, why bring it up? Because your idea, regardless of marketplace, has

a similar group. Maybe it’s not as easy to find or as easy to reach, but there are powerful

sneezers in the audience for almost every idea. It’s the money paradox, but on a much smaller

scale. Finding these sneezers and giving them a sample of your idea for free is a no-brainer.

Even better, figure out what it costs to deliver it with impact.

I met with a marketing executive from Hong Kong last week. He’s building a company that

is targeting the health care and financial services industries. He’s got a big idea, and if he can

persuade some of the key sneezers in the industry, then most of the other companies are sure

to follow.

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The good news is that he was invited to speak at a gathering of 100 top chief information

officers from the financial services industry he’s targeting. The bad news is that he was

planning just to give a speech.

What an opportunity! What a chance to talk to all the key sneezers at once and dominate the

hive. We did the math, and it’s clear that even if he needs to buy each one of the attendees a

BMW to get their attention, it’s worth it.

When you have an opportunity to dominate not just a hive, but the sneezers in the hive, you

need to spare no expense to do so. Don’t just give a speech about how your product works

well. Fly in three satisfied customers to tell their stories in person. Don’t just give a speech

and ask for questions. Sponsor a cocktail party afterward so you can meet individuals and

answer their questions. Don’t just give a speech about how your product is safe and secure.

Give each attendee a first aid kit for their car. By focusing on this key moment, by overinvesting,

you can lay the foundation for a virus to come later.

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How An Ideavirus Can Drive The Stock Market

When you think about it, the stock market is nothing but thousands of ideaviruses. (That’s

right, thousands. An ideavirus doesn’t have to dominate our entire culture to be an

ideavirus… some last for just a few days in a very isolated hive, then disappear.) When you

buy a share of stock, you don’t really get anything—just the right to sell that stock to

someone else tomorrow. So… if a positive virus catches on and the demand for the stock

skyrockets, you win.

The market’s respect for ideavirus thinking starts before the company even goes public.

Choosing an investment bank for your IPO is a first step. Firms like Goldman Sachs and

Alex.Brown are powerful sneezers (even though they can easily be bought off with millions of

dollars in investment banking fees by eager companies looking to go public). If one of these

firms aggressively recommends the stock to institutions, the virus starts off on the right foot.

The alternative—marketing the stock through a smaller, less respected (and perhaps cheaper)

investment bank—is almost certain to lead to a lower return.

The next step is pricing the IPO. The current rage is to underprice the stock being offered to

the public, because that will lead to a huge first day appreciation in the stock. It’s not

unusual for an IPO (like Globe.com, Martha Stewart Omnimedia or Street.com) to

dramatically increase in price on the first day of trading.

Why do this? Why leave all those proceeds on the table so that the folks lucky enough to buy

into your IPO make the money instead of your company? The answer is simple, and it has

two parts:

First, by rewarding the powerful sneezers who are lucky enough to buy into your IPO, you

maximize the chance that they’ll participate and will tell their less powerful (but more

numerous friends) about this exciting new investment.

Second, the rapid rise in the first day of trading allows other powerful sneezers (the news

media and brokers you don’t have direct contact with) to talk with excitement and

amazement to the next group of potential investors. In other words, this is cheap marketing.

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It’s a way of communicating news (this is a hot stock) to large numbers of people in a

powerful way.

After the stock is public, the company has its work cut out for it. There’s a multi-layered

community of intermediaries between the stock and the people who want to buy it, and the

company must work the hive to find the most powerful sneezers able to spread the word

about the stock.

The first stop is the market analysts who cover the stock. Once again, the marketplace sees

this group as being powerful sneezers (when one analyst recommended Amazon.com, the

price of the stock doubled in just a few days). By courting the analyst community, a

company can find a way to communicate the story they’ve created around the stock.

Don’t underestimate the power of the story. There are almost no other cues available to

persuade someone to spread the word about a stock. You can’t see it or touch it or smell

it—it’s just an intangible right to make money in the future. As a result, the story must be

able to describe the reason why the stock is selling for x today but will be selling for 3x

tomorrow.

Brokers are a fascinating component in the spreading of an ideavirus around a stock.

Remember, they’re not paid unless people trade. Buy and hold is the enemy of most

stockbroker compensation schemes, since they only charge for trades and are paid by

commission. Yet, for many decades, brokers were seen as powerful sneezers, especially if they

helped make you money in the past. In fact, they’ve always been promiscuous sneezers,

motivated (whether in the short term or the long term) by their ultimate financial gain. A

“good” broker is one who realizes that if he postpones financial gain in exchange for helping

his clients make money in the long run he’ll get more and more clients.

All this is changing as the world shifts to trading online, and more important, getting stock

news online. Suddenly, anyone can talk about stocks, anyone can post to a bulletin board,

and anyone can spread a rumor.

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As a result, stock ideaviruses spread much more often and much faster. In one case, the

public markets knew about a CEO’s plan to quit before his board of directors did. Because

the individuals who post these notes are anonymous and possess unknown motivations, the

chances that they’ll develop into powerful sneezers is slight. But the sheer number of posts

(more than 100,000 a day on Yahoo!’s bulletin boards alone) means that they have influence.

An astute CFO or CEO can look at the key factors in the creation and spread of a stock

ideavirus and launch a campaign to move the virus with a velocity and vector they’re

comfortable with, and more important, aim it at the appropriate hive.

Note, for example, that some stocks, like Iomega, are the darlings of online stock bulletin

boards. As a direct result, those stocks are far more volatile than the average. Live by the

sword…

Yahoo! has worked hard for years to manage the story about its stock. Gary Valenzuela, the

legendary former CFO at Yahoo!, was obsessed with three things:

1. Become a blue-chip stock, one that institutions would happily own.

2. Become profitable, to distinguish the Yahoo! story from its competitors.

3. Underpromise and overdeliver, always beating the “whisper numbers” that analyst

established for the company’s quarterly earnings.

As a result, Yahoo! stock has consistently and regularly outperformed its competitors. And

due to the success in labeling Yahoo! an Internet blue chip, the stock is much less susceptible

to swings due to rumors.

Was that expensive in the short run? No doubt. When the market was looking for good news

and hype, Yahoo! often refused to deliver. Short term gains were forsaken for building a

story, a story that could become an ideavirus to be delivered by analysts and other powerful

sneezers.

One way to predict the future of a stock, then, is to see beyond the story and understand

whether the company is actively managing the ideavirus, and doing it in a way that will move

it to the right hive.

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Bumper Sticker Marketing

Years ago, I was a walking parody of a high-tech yuppie.

I worked as a poorly compensated marketer at a start-up software company in Cambridge,

Massachusetts. I drove a dented old Saab. I used a Macintosh. And on the back of my Saab I

proudly affixed a bumper sticker that read, “I’d rather be driving a Macintosh.”

This is an ancient form of ideavirus marketing, of course. I used my car as an amplifier,

exposing my message to hundreds or thousands of people. But even better, given the

neighborhood I was driving in, I was focusing the message on an appropriate hive, and given

the car I was driving, adding power to my sneezing.

Think about it. If the bumper sticker had been on the back of a junker Chevy, rusting

outside an abandoned farm in Oklahoma, you would have had a very different response to

the message, no?

The neatest thing about this technique is the way Apple converted the private (what sort of

computer do I use) to the public (my proclamation of how happy I was to be a Mac user).

There are countless opportunities for marketers to do precisely the same thing today. And

not just on your bumper. Some marketers ride along with their product—the Ralph Lauren

pony, for example, is advertising on the front of your shirt all day long. Others manage to

make it a more political choice—Marlboro, for example, was one of the ten largest marketers

of imprinted clothing a few years ago.

Picking the medium for your “bumper sticker” is important, but it’s just as important to

determine why someone is going to be willing to stick his neck out to promote your product.

Personal pride is an excellent tactic! If people are willing to sneeze on your behalf because

they’re proud of you, your product and their association with it, you’re in. Now all you’ve

got to do is give them a smooth way to spread the word.

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No, You Go First!

The challenge of the new idea is that very few people want to go first. Who was the first to

swim in the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts after years of it being off limits for

health reasons? Who was the first to give their kid the chicken pox vaccine? Which company

chose to be the first to file its taxes electronically?

One of the key reasons to launch an ideavirus is that you can give people a risk-free, cost-free

way to check out the safety of your idea before they commit. And more important, you can

create an aura around your idea—an aura of inevitability, of invincibility. When everyone is

buzzing about a new technique, tactic, service, musical style, club, food—whatever—it’s far

easier to put fear aside and try it.

But just as people are hesitant to be the first to buy a fancy new product, many are hesitant

to try a fancy new idea. There are plenty of people who want nothing to do with a new song

or a new book… they’re happy to wait until it’s been screened, filtered and accepted by the

mainstream.

So, depending on the hive you choose, you need to make it clear to that consumer that your

idea has arrived. That the water’s warm, the air is safe to breathe and your idea is a

comfortable, tried and true one.

One way to do this is with bestseller lists. And with testimonials. And by exposing the digital

word of mouth record to let them see the countless people who have tried it and liked it. Do

it with the specific objective of reminding people that others have taken the risk and happily

survived. If you work at this and do it on purpose, you’ll be amazed at how much water you

can drain from the river—how easy it is to bring the rocks to the surface, how powerful you

can make the message when you expose the connections that led you from person A to

person B. It’s in this sort of active ideavirus marketing that many brands are able to run rings

around the competition.

Even before you do this, offering your idea in trial-sized, bite-sized portions is critical. Many

companies have created neat, effective online products, only to see them fail because they

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required consumers to go through a time-consuming download before they could use

them… and if they couldn’t use it, they couldn’t understand why they wanted it! Catch-22:

a product you don’t know if you want to download until you download it.

Give them a version instead that doesn’t require a download and doesn’t work as well—but

still makes their life better. Why? Because now that I’ve sampled it without risking a virus or

taking a lot of time or trying to understand the arcane intricacies of downloading in

Windows, now I’m willing to invest the time to do it.

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Digital Media Wants to Be Free

When was the last time you bought some table salt?

Odds are, you didn’t pay very much. Salt is cheap. Why? Because once you own a salt mine

and pay for a salt factory, the cost of making a pound of salt is low indeed. But because

there’s more than one salt mine out there, the competition for getting salt sales is pretty

intense. And given that all salt is pretty much the same, why pay more?

Pricing battles are certainly not unusual in physical goods. In fact, almost every competitive

category of item that’s entirely physical (without an idea attached) uses cost-based pricing. In

other words, it’s a commodity. When those rules are abandoned (as they were with crude oil

during the Arab oil embargo) consumers are shocked and angry.

For a number of reasons, this pricing approach hasn’t really kicked in with intellectual

property. It only costs McKinsey a few hundred bucks to write a report for Chrysler, but

they happily charge a few million dollars for it. One more copy of a Bob Dylan CD only

costs 80 cents to make (less than a vinyl record!) but it sells for twenty times that.

Why?

The biggest reason is that intellectual property is rarely a commodity. There are many kinds

of salt, but there’s only one Bob Dylan. And when you want to listen to Dylan, it’s not clear

that 10,000 Maniacs is an acceptable substitute.

Because intellectual property is unique, it has long resisted a trend toward commodity

pricing at the margin. In fact, the price of most forms of intellectual property has increased.

Barring one big exception:

Stuff that went from being expensive to being free.

The most popular web server software (the programs they use to run most giant websites) is

not sold by Microsoft. And it doesn’t cost $10,000. It’s free.

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The most popular web browsers are free.

The cost of listening to a Beethoven concerto went from $30 (at some fancy theater in

London) to $0 after radio was invented.

The cost of watching a movie on network television is zero.

The mathematics of the ideavirus make it too compelling for the creators of viruses to stay

greedy.

The more people know your virus, the more it is worth!

Thus, if charging people for exposure to your virus is going to slow down its spread, give it

away.

Apple just cut the price of WebObjects software from $50,000 a copy to $699. That’s a

98.7% decrease in the price.

Why? Because Apple realized that unless a lot of people use their software, no one will use it.

Take a look at http://www.mp3.com. Pick an obscure music category like Celtic. Go to the end of

the bestseller list: there are 1,168 songs listed. These are not illegal copyright scams, where

the music has been stolen by the artist. These are real songs, posted by the artists or their

labels. The whole song… not part of it.

Why would anyone do this? Give away an entire album of music when Bob Dylan can

charge $16?

Look at it from your point of view. An unknown artist is a commodity. An unknown artist is

the same as a box of salt. If you don’t know why the artist is unique, why pay?

Look at it from the artist’s point of view. The cost of giving away songs is literally zero. Once

you’ve made a record, the cost of one more copy of an MP3 is nothing. And if it helps you

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get listened to, if it helps you build your virus, then you’re one step closer to no longer being

a commodity!

In fact, many artists would pay people to listen to their MP3 cuts if they thought it would

help them break through the clutter and get famous. Take a look at the Payola section of

MP3.com. You can do exactly that… pay money to have your song promoted so you can

give it away for free.

Of course, once you’re famous, you can go ahead and charge $16 for your CDs.

Or can you?

Sure, there’s going to be room for collectibles. For live events. For autographed guitars. But

once something is no longer hot and fresh and the latest, rarest thing, why wouldn’t the selfinterested

artist go ahead and give it away free to stoke the ideavirus for the next release? In a

competitive marketplace where there’s transparent information about who’s listening to

what, the Internet becomes radio. And artists know that charging radio stations is dumb.

This same logic applies to books. And to just about any other sort of digital media you can

think of. Unless there’s an extraordinarily unique property of the media being offered, I

maintain that sooner or later it’s going to be free. The Bloomberg machine used by stock

brokers, for example, commanded a huge price premium for years, because the combination

of excellent data and locked-in user interface meant it wasn’t worth switching. But as the

web replicates more and more of the data available, it’s inevitable Bloomberg’s market share

will decrease—and their prices will as well.

The exciting thing is that people who go first, who put their previously expensive digital

media out there for free, will gain the lion’s share of attention and launch bigger and longer

lasting viruses.

So. Who wants to go first? And who wants to go… last?

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Van Gogh Lost His Ear To Prove A Point

When Vincent was painting, he often sold his work for just enough money to cover the cost

of paints and canvas. Back then, his ideas and his paintings were one and the same, and

neither was held in very high regard.

Over the last hundred years or so, something has changed. Instead of selling for $200, or

$2,000 or even $20,000, it’s not unusual to read of a $10,000,000 sale of a Van Gogh. Over

time his paintings have increased in value with each sale. But the paintings haven’t changed

at all, have they?

What’s changed is the value of his ideas and the popularity of his ideas—not the ideas

themselves. It’s easy to get a reproduction of a Van Gogh. For a few hundred dollars, you can

even get a painted reproduction that only a trained expert can tell isn’t the original. So why

pay twenty million dollars?

Because you’re buying a souvenir. An expensive souvenir, no doubt, but a souvenir

nonetheless. The original painting is a priceless keepsake that reminds you of the idea

Vincent Van Gogh first unleashed on the world. And unfortunately for Van Gogh and his

heirs, it took far too long for the ideavirus to spread.

Compare this inexorable and dramatic increase in value with the resale value of a newspaper.

Today’s newspaper is “worth” fifty cents to a dollar. The combination of recent news and

events in one handy packet makes it a reasonable purchase. However, yesterday’s paper is

virtually worthless. And if you’ve got a big stack of them, you’re going to have to pay me to

take them away.

Why? What happened? Simple: the newspaper is a vessel for ideas with very short half-lives,

and once the ideas aren’t fresh any more, they’re worthless. Imagine, though, how much you

could sell tomorrow’s paper for—especially if you sold it while the stock market was still

open.

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This is a lesson in one way to make your digital media valuable: keep it fresh. It’s getting

harder and harder to do; they used to send Charles Dickens’ serialized novels over here by

boat—news that was three weeks old was considered fresh—but that doesn’t mean you can’t

succeed.

By focusing on souvenirs and speed, creators of digital media can create two effective ways to

profit when we play by the coming new set of rules.

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Answering InaÕs Question

So how is a bookstore to make money? Or a publisher? Or an art dealer or a consultant or a

music label?

The biggest objection to ideavirus thinking is that it represents a substantial change from

standard operating procedures. Successful companies are in no hurry to rock the boat…

especially if it represents a significant change in the status quo and a risk to planned-for

revenue and profits.

Mighty Words (an Internet articles publisher) is aggressively targeting traditional book

publishers and re-sellers by creating a new online business that cuts out all the middlemen

and lets authors sell works (preferably 15 to 60 pages) directly to readers. Go to their site and

you can find thousands of articles, priced from $3 to $30 each.

Mighty Words gets half the revenue, the author gets half, the reader gets insight and wisdom

and everybody wins. By creating new markets for mid-length ideas, the company seems to be

filling a niche. Of course, then they can turn their success into dominance by integrating up

the food chain until they disrupt all the competition in the publishing world and profit

mightily.

So you’d think that the concept of ideaviruses would be attractive to this maverick company.

After all, they’re only a few months old.

Not true. It bugs them terribly to give away ideas, because it flies in the face of their brand

new business model. After all, if an author profits most by giving away her work, how does

Mighty Words make money?

If you catch yourself asking this question about a new business model innovation (“How

would we make money?”) you’re headed for trouble. The Internet doesn’t care how you

make money. The Internet isn’t going to wait while you figure out how to react. Instead,

there’s some crazy entrepreneur who’s willing to spend years of his life making you miserable

by wrecking your business model.

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Email didn’t ask the fax companies if it was okay with them if a new, instant, permanent,

digital communications tool came along and wrecked the fax business. Matchmaker.com

didn’t hold meetings with the extremely profitable video dating services out there to find out

if it was okay for them to launch. Who cares if Matchmaker.com never makes money? What

matters to the existing businesses is that these new kids on the block have wrecked the

business landscape for the old providers.

Giving digital media away is a reality. Non-dominant players in any industry will always

succeed more by giving away digital content and then profiting later than they will by

holding back to preserve somebody else’s business model.

It was a mistake for the record companies to fight radio and MTV. It’s a mistake for them to

fight Napster. Rather than fighting to patch the leaky bucket, perhaps they could redefine

their roles so they can figure out how to profit from a “free” world.

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Crossing The Chasm With An Ideavirus

In his brilliant book, Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore unleashed a powerful ideavirus

about how new businesses and new ideas get spread. Basically, there’s a chasm in the product

adoption cycle.

The curve used to look like this:

On the left are early adopters, the nerds who love new stuff, who want to get their hands on

anything neat and potentially wonderful. On the right are the laggards, who are still having

trouble getting rid of their steam engine cars.

The meat is obviously in the center. That’s where the vast majority of us live, and where the

combination of big audience and pretty decent pricing is most attractive to a marketer.

In the old days, people believed that you could introduce a product to the early adopters, use

the high profits from those sales to ramp up production and advertising, and then roll the

product out to the masses.

There’s a problem with this view: there’s a gap in the curve. A chasm.

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What happened? Turns out people on the right side of the chasm aren’t just lazier or less

intellectually curious than the folks on the left of the chasm. It turns out that people on the

right are fundamentally different from the folks on the left. How?

Pre-chasm people want something cool. Post-chasm people want something that works.

A nerd wants the latest personal digital assistant. An executive wants to keep her

appointments straight.

A cutting-edge IT guy at Allstate wants a device that will use satellite technology to update

claims instantly. The CEO at Nationwide wants something that will reduce costs.

A fashionista wants the latest haute couture outfit from Paris, regardless of how ridiculous it

looks. The party girl wants something that’ll get her a hot date next week.

The foodie wants maple-jalapeño corncakes, layered with crème fraiche and bourbon. The

hungry person just wants something to eat.

As you can see, focusing on the folks who will give you early feedback, be your initial

sneezers, your first customers and probably your start-up’s employees is a one-way ticket to

doom. Their advice will help you make stuff that’s expensive, heavy, hard to use, awkward

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and difficult to understand. You’ll be the darling of some well-respected sneezers, and then

you’ll fail. This is why many ideaviruses start with plenty of powerful sneezers but end up

dying.

It happened to Apple with the Newton. It happened to Microsoft with almost every product

they’ve ever launched (Bill Gates is to the far, far left of the chasm—that’s why it takes

Microsoft to version 3 to build something that catches on). It happened to Reebok and to

Stephen Sondheim and to Lou Reed. In every case, they indulged the pre-chasm audience

and lost the big wins on the right. (Of course, in some cases—like Microsoft—sheer staying

power is able to force you over the chasm.)

The challenge in launching an ideavirus is to understand who the pre-chasm sneezers are,

and using them but not letting them use you. In other words, they’re the ones who are most

likely to embrace your new idea and talk about it, but if you don’t get past them to the rest

of the curve, you’re doomed.

Why do Woody Allen movies consistently sell so few tickets? They’re certainly adored by

critics, nominated for awards and attended by a core group of sneezers. The reason is simple:

the virus hits a chasm. There’s a huge gap between the Woody Allen audience and the rest of

the population. Because of this chasm, the word rarely spreads as far and as wide as it could.

The success of his latest movie, “Small Time Crooks,” points to the problem. This movie has

box-office results that rank among the top four he’s ever released for one simple reason.

During the month it was released, it was the only clean family movie available. By focusing

(intentionally or not) on creating a wry, funny movie that was understandable at many levels

and worth bringing your kids to, Woody crossed the chasm. Suddenly, the sneezers were

saying, “This is a great movie for your family,” instead of saying, “this is another great

Woody Allen movie.”

Some viruses are just never going to cross the chasm. Try as they might, the computer nerds

are having no luck at all getting normal people to start using Linux. And the guys who sell

the hottest hot sauce in the world are just not going to find themselves on the table at TGI

Friday’s restaurant.

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But that’s okay. It’s okay because these idea merchants understand that the hive they’re

targeting is not everyone. They understand that if they choose the right hive, it’s okay if it’s

small, it’s okay if it’s not everyone. The caveat, of course, is to match your expenses and your

expectations to the size of the hive you’ve chosen. If you spend big on product development

and marketing, figuring that will get you over the chasm, it better.

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The Myth Of The Tipping Point

One of the most seductive ideas in Gladwell’s The Tipping Point is that somehow a magic

moment appears when the entire population goes from blissful unawareness of your offering

to total and complete infatuation.

While this certainly appears to happen, it’s not a reality for most companies and most ideas,

and it’s not even a requisite for mindblowing success. There are two related reasons for this.

The first is that it ignores the power of the hive. The chances that you’re going to launch an

ideavirus that consumes the entire population is slim indeed. After all, there are seven billion

people out there, and all of them have very different needs and communication cycles. Even

if you just boil it down to the United States, or to Republicans with Internet access, it’s

pretty clear that large hives very rarely tip about anything.

The second reason is that winning and tipping aren’t the same thing. In order to really win

with an ideavirus, you have to concentrate your message very tightly on a specific hive. But

even then it’s not clear to me that you have to tip to win.

Let’s take a look at eBay, for example. By almost any measure, eBay is a winner. It’s

employees are millionaires and billionaires. Early investors are delighted. Users are happy,

with time spent on the service going up all the time.

But has eBay tipped? Certainly not in terms of awareness among the general population.

When asked to name an online service, only a tiny fraction of the population picks eBay as

their first choice. But it gets even more obvious when you ask people where they go to buy

and sell used junk. The vast majority of people are using classified ads and garage sales, not

eBay.

Yes, the management of eBay is on the cover of Fortune and Business Week at least once a

month, or so it seems. Yes, every meeting at certain high-tech companies includes the

sentence, “But will this allow us to become the eBay of [insert business here].” Within a very

small, very focused, very profitable hive, eBay is a winner. But it didn’t happen because some

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magical tipping process took place. It happened because a smart, focused, powerful ideavirus

started and spread across a concentrated hive of investors and pundits, and this led a tiny

company to have a huge stock market valuation.

The reason I point out this myth is that it’s dangerous. Dangerous because it leads idea

merchants to believe that if they just wait long enough, something will happen and make

them tip—like Yahoo! or the Atkins diet or Nike or the Macarena. I don’t buy it. The odds

are with you if you focus on small hives, filled with pre-chasm sneezers, and then obsess with

crossing the chasm as fast as you possibly can. If you tip, that’s a bonus.

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The Compounding Effect

One of the factors that makes the tipping point myth seem more real is the power that comes

from multiple sneezers. While one or two recommendations might make for a smooth

transition, there’s no doubt that as the number of powerful sneezers recommending an idea

to you increases, the chances that you’re going to use it dramatically increases.

This is a genuine side effect of the tipping point. As you are surrounded by hive members

who loudly sneeze about a new idea, the greater your chances of at least trying the idea.

Rather than decreasing returns, as we find in advertising, there are actually increasing returns

from an ideavirus. The more people who have it, the more you want it.

Are there iconoclasts who fight every trend? Of course. They wouldn’t be seen in a hip car or

a hip restaurant or listening to a pop tune. But for most individuals, in most hives, the

compounding effect is quite strong.

Thus, one of the most essential tasks an idea merchant can accomplish is to bring all positive

news to the forefront. They make every hive member think that every other hive member is

already converted to the virus, thus creating the self-fulfilling prophecy that leads to success.

Publishing houses do this when they print lots and lots of copies of a book and ship it out to

stores. If there are tons stacked up by the cash register, many people think that this must be

the hot new book, so they buy it. On the basis of this trial, the book shows up on the

bestseller lists soon after being published. This, of course, leads to more people trying it,

because, after all, it’s on the bestseller list. So, without any genuine “word of mouth,” the

book has established a much larger foundation. It won’t get any bigger unless the idea is

virusworthy, but at least the book got a shot.

On Eric Raymond’s page promoting his essay “The Cathedral and the Bazaar,” he lists and

points to critiques of his work. Why? Because bringing these critiques (both positive and

negative) to the forefront is an excellent way to bring the compounding effect into play.

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Most marketers focus on getting organic word of mouth going without taking the time to lay

a framework for the compounding effect. Music Direct, on the other hand, goes to great

lengths to leverage powerful sneezers. On their site (www.amusicdirect.com) they list the

recommended recordings of several high-end stereo magazines. Each one is linked directly to

their online ordering service. Thus, you can read a review in Stereophile and know that you’re

only a click away from buying it on their site. Look at a few of the lists and you’ll notice that

the same record shows up more than once. Boom. Even if you weren’t considering buying

that title, the fact that three trusted sneezers have recommended it makes it much more likely

that you’ll consider it.

The folks at Telarc Records learned this lesson early on. Unable to compete with the big

boys at the other classical music labels, they recorded the Cincinnati Orchestra playing

dramatic renditions of songs that only a stereo lover could love. Big cymbals. Cannons. You

get the idea.

Then, they worked hard to get high-end stereo shops to use the CDs they were recording to

demonstrate their equipment. Thousands of consumers who might never have rushed out to

buy another recording of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” now discovered that Telarc’s

recording was being used anytime they listened to $5,000 speakers or $3,000 amplifiers.

Hey, if you were willing to drop 20 large on a stereo system, certainly it was worth a few

more bucks to have the best CDs to play on it, wasn’t it?

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Bill GatesÕ Biggest Nightmare

One of the repeated mantras during the Microsoft anti-trust sideshow was that middleware

threatened the very essence of Microsoft’s cash cow: the Windows OS.

Basically, middleware is software that sits on top of the operating system on your computer

and talks to the Internet or other programs. Once you develop a killer piece of middleware, it

doesn’t matter what operating system you’re running—the middleware works the same. The

first successful example of middleware was the browser, but you can be sure there will be

more.

Today I spoke to a woman named Louise Wannier who developed a piece of software called

enfish. You can find it at http://www.enfish.com.

What if there were a piece of middleware that was designed for people who had an “always

on” connection to the Net. And what if that software let you automatically track your stocks,

your email, your calendar, your instant messages—all the stuff you spend time doing online,

but in an organized way, and all at once?

If you’re like me, that accounts for the vast majority of time you use the computer.

Suddenly, Windows is obsolete.

Sounds like it’s time for Louise to start shopping for a new Porsche, no?

But there are some problems. And all of them are related to the idea she’s created and how to

turn it into an ideavirus.

Problem #1 In order to use enfish, you have to download code. Experience has shown us that

this is a huge amount of friction with which to saddle a new idea. Basically, you can’t enjoy

the software until you go through the pain and suffering of downloading and installing it.

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Products like Shockwave and various forms of wallets have shown us that it can cost as much

as $100 in direct to consumer marketing expenditures to get someone to download a piece of

software. In the case of enfish, this is way, way too much.

Solution: Get rid of the download if possible. If not, make it swift and painless.

Problem #2: This is a private experience. Unlike ICQ or Hotmail, which are both based on

communications and are thus pretty viral, enfish saves you time by organizing your life and

your data, and so you’re not naturally inclined to spread the idea. In other words, it doesn’t

do its own sneezing, nor does it reward you for sneezing on its behalf.

Solution: Make it public. Let people post their bookmarks and layouts for their co-workers.

Figure out how to turn it into a communications tool because communications tools are the

most likely to go viral.

Problem #3: It’s not very smooth. It’s awfully difficult to describe what enfish does, because

it’s not simple. It’s biggest strength—that it solves a problem you didn’t know you had—is

also a huge hassle when it comes to marketing the thing. “Free Email” is smooth indeed.

“Automated organizer for always-on Internet knowledge workers that saves you three hours a

day” is not.

Solution: This is the hardest one. Breakthroughs frequently have this problem. Figure out

how to teach the sneezers what to say… even if it means giving them a pre-written email to

forward to friends.

Problem #4: There’s no existing amplifier. There are plenty of sites where people talk about

cars or hobbies or restaurants. Find a hive and you can talk to them. There are magazines

about gardening and starting Internet companies. There are TV shows about cooking and

the weather. But there’s no natural way to amplify a message about the problem that enfish

solves. There are few easily identifiable hives that are just sitting there, waiting to hear from

enfish.

Solution: Use advertising to feature your most satisfied users.

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Problem #5: The ideavirus isn’t a natural monopoly. In other words, once they do a great job

of spreading the virus, it’s not clear that enfish’s solution will be the only one to triumph.

One of the amazing things about ICQ, for example, is that the better they did, the better

they did. In other words, there were network effects that created a natural monopoly.

Unfortunately for enfish, there isn’t an obvious reason why an enfish knock-off couldn’t be

as good as enfish.

Solution: The same communication tools that made it go viral will also support its position

as a monopoly.

The good news is that once it catches on, enfish will be extraordinarily persistent. It will sit

on your desk for years, saving you time and making enfish a profit as they go.

The other good news is that because the benefit delivered by enfish is so awesome, once the

virus starts to spread through a hive, it ought to spread with high velocity, and with the

support of the very best kind of powerful sneezers. This is a product that can easily attract

the attention of sneezers on the left side of the chasm (the early adopters) but also offers very

real benefits that will make it fairly smooth to transfer to the right side of the chasm.

So what should enfish do?

My recommendation is that they focus on a single hive: people who trade stocks online.

Why?

Well, the hive is pretty easy to talk to. There are eight or so online brokerage companies who

could all benefit by sneezing about enfish to their best customers. And online traders talk to

each other constantly, meaning that the message can spread through this community with

enormous velocity.

Further, the benefit to online traders is much, much easier to describe, so it’s a lot smoother:

Make more money by trading in a more organized way.

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There’s also a vacuum here. Nobody else is offering this value proposition to this audience.

And finally, because online traders tend to be more technically astute, the friction induced by

the download will be less of a barrier.

After infecting the trader hive, will the enfish virus jump to other hives? Perhaps. But in

order to do that, enfish needs to make two significant changes to their product (remember,

the best ideaviruses are integrated right into the product, not tacked on at the end by the

marketing department).

The first change is to create significant benefits to users that derive from enfish’s scale. In

other words, create a network effect so there’s a natural monopoly.

The second change is to create clear and obvious incentives for existing enfish users to

evangelize and bring in new enfish users. These could be simple bribes, but it’s much, much

more effective if the incentives are related to the product—making it work better when you

have more buddies involved.

If they can accomplish these two tricky tasks (so tricky you’ll notice I haven’t even told you

how to do it!), then the odds of the virus jumping from the trader hive to the Net audience

at large increases dramatically.

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Hey, Skinny!

One of the most successful books of the last five years has been The Atkins Diet. Dr. Atkins

has sold more than seven million copies of his books…with almost no advertising.

How does a marketing phenomenon like this happen? Conventional marketing wisdom says

that he would need to spend tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to motivate the one

out of every 40 Americans who has rushed out and bought his book.

The secret to the book’s success is that the diet was virusworthy. Unlike other diets, it really

generates remarkable results in a very short time (let’s leave the health discussion for another

book).

But being virusworthy isn’t enough. It was also smooth. All you had do to tell someone what

diet you were on was say one word, “Atkins.” Because the author became synonymous with

the diet, it was easy to spread.

But the real secret was amplification. Word of mouth could never generate seven million

conversions, not without being amplified.

So what was the amplifier? Your skinnyness! Whenever the diet worked, nosy and proud

friends would ask the dieter, “Hey, skinny! You look great. How’d you do it?” And the dieter

would proudly respond: “Atkins.”

This self-fueling virus saved Atkins millions. And it would never work for transcendental

meditation, St. Johns Wort or reflexology. Nobody is going to notice your inner peace, after

all. Yes, we may be obsessed with the way we look, but it also leads to powerful viruses.

If you doubt the power of this, take a look at all the tattooed kids on the beach.

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Get Big Fast? The Mistake So Many Companies MakeÉ

Why was there so much bloodletting among consumer etailers this spring? How did

Boo.com burn through more than a hundred million dollars in start up cash? Why is

Salon.com, arguably one of the most literate sites on the web, floundering?

The answer for almost all these high profile sites is the same: Get Big Fast isn’t always the

right advice.

Remember, an ideavirus adores a vacuum. So many companies, especially those racing to be

the first to fill a vacuum, spend a huge percentage of their funds trying to prime an ideavirus

by buying huge amounts of poorly executed, poor performing interruption advertising.

Big-spending interruption marketers hope the following:

1.

That sheer bulk will make this bad advertising work.

2.

That sheer bulk will scare off the competition.

3.

That an ideavirus will be spawned and they will become instantly and permanently

popular.

4.

That once they are a center of an ideavirus, their truly flawed business model will

magically make sense. Sort of the AOL effect—you can’t be profitable if you’re small and

illogical, but if you’re big and illogical, you can make a fortune from the companies that

pay you because you have a huge market.

They also fear:

1. That someone else will come along and spend more and move faster than them.

2. That if they take their time, the market will realize that their business model is totally

flawed and they won’t be able to get any more funding.

Alas, the pursuit of an ideavirus has confused their analysis. Instead of viewing themselves as

a natural monopoly, as virusworthy, as needing to fill a vacuum, they could have considered

a very different analysis:

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1. The ideavirus space for “online merchant” is already filled. It’s filled by Amazon, and to a

lesser, more twisted degree, by eBay and Priceline.

2. Given that the big space is filled, they ought to understand that the virus they’re going to

spread is going to be far smaller and far more quirky. Thus, the win is smaller, but the good

news is that they’ll need far less money to get there.

3. Once you accept the second point, you can realize that growing a virus slowly is actually a

better strategy. Why? Because you get to perfect your business model as you grow, and you

get holistic, organic virus growth, instead of the forced growth a Super Bowl ad brings you.

In other words, you actually get to earn the people who visit your site.

Diamond Organics (www.diamondorganics.com) is following this approach, and it’s

working. Instead of trying to be a category killer and spending tons of money to persuade the

world that their organic vegetable-by-Federal-Express business is a good one, they’re instead

focused on delighting one customer at a time.

By spending little and scaling a lot more slowly, Diamond is able to build serious sneezers,

sneezers who are quite powerful and need little additional inducement to spread the word.

By getting their systems into shape they avoid the pitfalls that struck ToysRUs.com last

Christmas.

But doesn’t this fly in the face of the ideavirus mantra? In many ways it does. It also

challenges the permission marketing idea that once a consumer solves a problem, they’re not

in any hurry to find someone else to solve the same problem, so vendors can achieve lockout.

The problem with implementing the grow-slow strategy is that you might not get the

chance. If you’re a CEO or marketing executive in a new business, you’re subject to the

Catch-22 of rapid business development. You can’t grow (and you can’t get funded) if you

don’t make promises, but those promises might not be able to be kept. And if the promises

aren’t kept (ToysRUs.com failing to ship in time for Christmas) or the promises cost too

much to keep (Boo.com) it doesn’t matter anyway, because you’ll be bust. So most

entrepreneurs make the promises anyway, even though they realize that organic growth is the

better strategy.

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So, there has to be a middle ground. And the middle ground that makes the most sense to

me is to not launch a business that can’t sustain an ideavirus. And second, not to force an

ideavirus to happen before the market is ready for it.

My best example is Amazon. My firm belief is that if Jeff Bezos had launched it a year later

or a year earlier, it would never have worked. A year too early and there wouldn’t have been

enough sneezers and the medium wouldn’t have been ready to spread the word. A year too

late and the market would have been so overheated that his promise would have never

broken through the clutter and attracted the attention of sneezers in the first place.

It’s hard for me to imagine how a $50 million marketing campaign is ever appropriate for

any business to launch an ideavirus. If you need to interrupt that many people, you’re doing

something wrong. Sure, you need that much (actually, much more than that) to launch a

brand and to do traditional marketing. But if you’re virusworthy, you generally can do it for

a lot less money than that.

So you need to match the speed of your virus not just with the money you raise but also with

the promises you make to your investors. Yes, Hotmail and Netscape and ICQ and eBay

grew fast, fast, fast. But that doesn’t mean you will. Optimize for the virus and build it into

your company—or expect that it isn’t going to happen.

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The Heart Of Viral Marketing

Remember, viral marketing is a special case of the ideavirus where the amplifier for the virus

is built right into the product. And the hot spot for this wonderful self-propagating process is

in communication products.

Let’s take a look at the history of interpersonal business communication over the last 120

years:

Stamps

Telegraph

Telegram

Telephone

Telex

Fax

Conference Calls

Federal Express

Cell Phones

Videoconferencing

Email

The Web

ICQ and Instant Messaging

It’s a pretty extraordinary list. Twenty-five years ago, when I got my first real job, we had no

voice mail, no web pages, no fax machine, no cell phones, no pagers and no email. I

sometimes wonder what we did all day!

So why is there such rapid innovation in this field, when, at the same time, we are still using

precisely the same Qwerty keyboard found on the early typewriters and the same pink “while

you were out” message pads that came with the first phone?

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The answer is pretty simple: Each one of these devices creates long-term profits for its

inventor but is spread at a relatively low cost. And the reason it spreads? Because of viral

marketing.

Communication products demand viral marketing because they’re worthless without

someone at the other end. Metcalfe’s law tells us that the value of a network increases with

the square of the number of people using it. So when there are 10 fax machines in the world,

that’s 25 times better than when there were just 2.

Once I buy a communications device, two things happen. First, I become a powerful sneezer,

telling all my friends to buy one so I can send them stuff. And second, provided it’s a tool

that uses an existing channel (like FedEx or Hotmail), every time I send someone a message,

it’s selling the medium.

The story of Post-It notes is so good it ought to be apocryphal but it’s actually true. Nobody

was buying them. 3M was going to cancel the whole program. Then the brand manager of

the product persuaded the secretary of the chairman of 3M to send a case of Post-Its to the

secretaries of the chairmen of the other 499 Fortune 500 companies.

Suddenly, the most powerful sneezers in the most powerful companies in the country were

sending around memos, all containing comments scrawled on Post-Its. It took just a few

months after that for it to become yet another successful business communication device. A

classic ideavirus.

When I was in business school, a classmate spent a year working on a secret project he

wouldn’t tell anyone about. Turns out he was working to launch MCI Mail, the first

commercial email system. It’s a shame he couldn’t tell anyone, because a bunch of us would

have been happy to tell him what we knew, even 20 years ago: An email system isn’t going to

work if there isn’t anyone to send email to!

MCI was charging about $100 to set you up, and another $20 or so a month, plus usage, for

this new service. Big mistake! They inserted friction early in the process, ensuring that people

would never try it, especially so early in the virus’s life.

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My idea was that they give MCI Mail, plus a computer to send it with, to 50 people in each

of the top 100 companies in a given industry. FREE. Suddenly, that industry’s leaders would

be communicating with each other fast and frequently. It would change the culture of the

company. The virus would spread. MCI would win.

What’s the lesson? There are two:

3.

If you can somehow convert your idea into a virus that has to do with communication,

it’s much easier to make it go viral. The best sort of communication is an actual

communication tool (like the fax machine or ICQ) but inventing words, new musical

concepts or other ways people communicate goes a long way as well.

4.

Find the powerful sneezers and beg, cajole and bribe them to use your new tool.

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The Great Advertising Paradox

Imagine for a second that there was a machine your company could buy. Figure it costs

anywhere from $1 million to $100 million. You’re promised by the salesman that using this

machine can transform your business, dramatically increase sales and profits and turn your

business into a success.

Interested?

What if the salesperson also tells you that companies who don’t buy the machine have a hard

time growing and often languish… and then she points out that one company, Procter &

Gamble, spent more than $2 billion on machines just like this one last year. Interested?

Oh. There’s one caveat. Actually two:

The ongoing output of the machine can’t be measured. You have almost no idea if it’s

working or not—and there’s no guarantee. If it doesn’t work, tough.

Still interested? Well, after those caveats, there’s just one more fact to mention: On average,

the machine only works for about one out of every ten companies that use it. Ninety percent

of the time, the machine fails to work.

By now, you’ve probably figured out that I’m talking about advertising. Mass market

advertising is one of the most puzzling success stories of our economy. Companies spend

billions of dollars to interrupt people with ads they don’t want about products they don’t

need. The ads rarely work. Ads that are created by less than competent ad agencies and

clients almost never work. One day, I’d like to write a book about the worst ads ever run, but

my fear is that it would be too long.

Now, writing off all marketing expenditures because most of the time they don’t work isn’t

the right answer, either. Hence the paradox. You can’t grow without it. But you often can’t

grow with it, either.

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So if advertising is such a crap shoot, such a dangerous venture, why do it? Because for the

last 100 years, the single best way to determine whether a company was going to get big or

stay small was to look at its advertising. Time and time again, aggressive companies with

great advertising—regardless of their industry—have managed to make the ads pay and to

grow and become profitable.

So what changed?

A few things. First, the clutter in the marketplace has finally made advertising even less

effective. A threshold has been crossed, and with hundreds of TV channels, thousands of

magazines and literally millions of websites, there’s just too much clutter to reliably interrupt

people. Add to this the “consumerization” of business-to-business sales (with more ads

directed at businesses than ever before) and the explosion of dot-com advertising, and it’s

easy to see that the game is fundamentally different.

So, what should we do about it? Consider the ironic situation that MarchFirst, Inc. finds

itself in. MarchFirst was formed in 2000, the result of a merger between USWeb/CKS,

which does websites and consulting and advertising, and Whittman-Hart, an Internet

consulting firm.

According to the New York Times, MarchFirst wants to launch with a bang, so they’ve

announced a $50,000,000 advertising campaign designed to “cut through the clutter” and to

“get the name out there, to create strong brand awareness,” according to Robert Bernard,

their CEO.

How are they going to do this? By buying full-page ads in newspapers and Internet trade

magazines, by running TV commercials during sporting events, and even running ads in

lifestyle magazines.

Now, be honest. If you’re flipping through a magazine or surfing through channels on TV

and you come across an ad that is based on “the human desire to be first,” will you stop and

pay attention? Will the slogan “a new company for the new economy” make you sit up and

take notice? Will you give up a few minutes of your precious time to read an ad about a

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company you’ve never heard of, which solves a problem you probably don’t have? Not

bloody likely.

Surely there’s a better way for this company to spend fifty million dollars. Surely there’s a

more effective way to start a relationship with the 10,000 people who matter to them than

interrupting millions of us over and over and over….

Old-fashioned, hand-crafted, fun-to-make, sorta-fun-to-watch interruption advertising isn’t

going to disappear altogether. But it’s just a matter of time before CEOs and investors start

measuring their ever-increasing ad budgets with the same critical eye they use for every other

insanely expensive investment they make.

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Permission: The Missing Ingredient

When Hotmail launched their free email service, they did almost everything right. They

built a product that was worthy of an ideavirus. They made is smooth. They built

amplification right into the product. They approached the right people and started with just

enough push to make the thing take off.

But then they made a huge error.

They forgot to get permission to follow up. They failed to ask their users (the folks who were

infected by the virus) if it was okay to send them an anticipated, personal and relevant email

every week. They didn’t build an asset.

As a result, the Hotmail website has one and only one way to make money. By selling banner

ads. And nobody clicks on banner ads when they’re reading their email. So advertising on the

Hotmail site is super cheap. And probably overpriced.

We’re talking a multi-billion-dollar mistake here. If they had permission to follow up with

20 million people every single week with an email that was filled with useful information and

relevant ads, they could easily sell the slots in this email for a buck a week. That’s a billion

dollars a year in lost revenue, which, using stock market multiples, is a gazillion dollars in

market cap. All because they forgot to ask for permission.

Let’s face it: It’s unlikely that every single idea you come up with is virusworthy. If we’re

going to have to grow our businesses in a reliable, predictable way, it’s unwieldy to have to

depend on an ideavirus catching on every time we want to grow. We still need a way to

communicate with people directly, to do it when we want to, to talk to the marketplace

without a filter.

Advertising used to be the way to do this. But what a waste! What a waste to have to pay a

magazine for an ad to reach a user you already have! You’ve got a pair of Nike sneakers in

your closet. But Nike has to buy an ad to reach you—they don’t have permission or the

ability to talk to you directly.

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Same is true with Stevie Wonder. You bought “Innervisions” because you heard it at a

friend’s house, or on the radio, not because you saw an ad. Yet when Stevie comes out with a

new album, his record label has to start all over again, interrupting you using mass media.

Both Stevie and his label waste a huge asset every single time you buy an album. They have

no idea who you are, and worse, they don’t have permission to contact you again.

The challenge of the idea merchant is to turn the virus into an asset. And you turn the virus

into an asset when you ask the user for permission to follow up directly!

This is probably the biggest mistake that ideavirus marketers have made to date. They launch

a virus—a website, a book, a record, a software program, a food—and enjoy the fruits of the

virus while it lasts, but fail to gain a long term asset. And without that asset, they can’t

launch new products or leverage their existing ones without long lag times and the high costs

associated with contacting the users they’ve already converted.

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How A Virus And Permission Team Up To Find Aliens

Turns out that the best way to find alien life somewhere in the universe is to listen.

Specifically, to use powerful supercomputers to scan the spectrums for anomalous sounds.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a supercomputer available that’s powerful enough to get the job

done in our lifetime. Which is why the SETI built the largest distributed computer network

in the world. More than 2,000,000 computers are working, in their spare time, to process

these huge chunks of data.

The mechanics of the system are elegant. Whenever your computer has some downtime, a

screensaver pops up, and behind the scenes, your Pentium processor starts cranking through

data that the computer downloads through the web. But what’s really neat is the fact that all

2,000,000 computers in the network signed up without any advertising or financial

inducement.

Instead, the SETI project launched an ideavirus. Word spread among nerds the world over

that they could help find alien intelligence by having their computers participate in the

network. It’s a classic ideavirus, propagated by some powerful sneezers.

The power of the network, though, comes from the fact that they don’t have to relaunch the

thing every week. That it’s incredibly persistent, of course (once you set it up, it stays set up

until you take the initiative to turn it off), but even better, they have permission to

communicate to their users.

This permission is an asset. You can measure it. You can leverage it. You could turn it into

cash if you wanted to.

Let’s take one more look at the sequence:

1. Invent a virusworthy idea.

2. Make it smooth and persistent.

3. Incent powerful sneezers.

4. Get their permission to follow up.

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The Art of Creating an Ideavirus

So far, much of what we’ve discussed is science. Mathematical formulas, game theory,

categories of individuals. This is stuff you have to do well to allow your virus to take hold.

And as the understanding of propagating viruses increases, companies will get better and

better at the tactics.

The hard part, though, is building the virus in the first place. The hard part is inventing an

idea that’s so compelling, so ¡Wow! that it spreads through the hive with high velocity,

converting everyone in its path.

How is it that some ideas move so quickly while others just languish? Why did the Apple

Newton fail so badly, while the Palm took off just a few years later?

Caveat: If I knew the answer, I’m not sure I would tell you! To date, no one has come up

with a repeatable formula for creating viruses in a reliable way. There are precious few people

who are serial virus starters.

My hope was that this would be a long chapter, and I could answer your big question about

how. Alas, I don’t know. I know it when I see it, but I fear the rest is art.

Which means you win by trying. And failing. Test, try, fail, measure, evolve, repeat, persist.

It’s old fashioned and hot and dusty and by no means guaranteed to work. Sigh.

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Is He Really More Evil Than Satan Himself?

The Google.com search engine is perhaps the most effective and accurate way to search the

web. Why? Because instead of reading every site and trying to understand the content of

every page, Google just reads the links to sites, and selects the pages that plenty of other sites

link to. This way, popular pages rise to the top, and it’s far harder to trick the engine into

pointing to your page by loading up on clever phrases.

Anyway, a few months ago, if you typed, “More Evil Than Satan Himself” into the Google

search engine, the top link it would return was Microsoft.com. Other links that followed

involved mostly Bill Gates.

How did this happen? How was it that enough hackers, nerds and online intelligentsia

building web pages had a strong enough opinion about Bill & Co. that they would go to the

trouble of creating links to Microsoft that used the words like evil and Satan?

Regardless of the dynamics of the virus itself, there’s no question that it’s pervasive, that it

will take years to erase and that it cost Microsoft dearly. By filling the vacuum and creating

an ideavirus of Microsoft as an all-powerful demon, trouncing anyone who came into its

path, the company’s critics brought the Justice Department knocking on its door.

Intel and Cisco have similar market share in the computer space. McDonald’s has similar

impact in the fast food business. There are plenty of companies that could have attracted

attention. But because Microsoft (through its actions—and inaction) spawned a virus, it was

easier for its critics to get the attention of the government. Regardless of your position on the

case, it’s clear that the negative virus (and Microsoft’s actions that reinforced that impression)

affected the judge’s ruling.

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Case Study: Why Digimarc Is Going To Fail

Looking at the world through the ideavirus lens makes it easier to prognosticate about a

company’s success or failure. Consider the case of Digimarc.

Digimarc is a fascinating idea. Create a tiny series of dots that can easily be hidden in

magazine ad. Then, if a consumer wants to go to the advertiser’s website, all they have to do

is hold the magazine up to the camera connected to their PC, and Digimarc’s software will

read the dots and automatically take the user to the company’s site.

Charge the advertisers a tiny fee per ad and everyone wins! The magazines win because it

makes their publications more useful. The advertisers win because it creates a direct and

impactful link between the consumer and the ad. And the user wins because she finds special

promotions or discounts on the site… without having to type in a pesky URL.

So why is it going to be an utter failure?

Because there isn’t enough money in the world to turn this into a success, and the shortcut

path of creating an ideavirus isn’t going to happen any time soon either. I know that I’m

going out on a limb here, as this technology has just been featured in Wired and other

magazines and has gotten a lot of press. Still, bear with me….

First, there are few sneezers. The participating magazines have agreed to run full-page ads

promoting the service (if it helps their advertisers, it’s well worth it) but other than that,

who’s going to talk about it?

There are no promiscuous sneezers. No individual is compensated in any way for spreading

the word. There are no powerful sneezers. It’s not such a great, awe-inspiring or even totally

neat thing to do with your computer. There aren’t overwhelming discounts or secret bits of

information, because, after all, if the advertiser was willing to give a discount to a Digimarc

user, he’d probably be willing to give it to everyone, right?

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In addition to having a hard time describing why the service might be virusworthy, it’s not

smooth, either. In order to even find out if you like the service, you have to buy a PC camera

($100, plus the hassle of setting it up) as well as download and install a piece of software on

your PC to run the thing.

Once it is set up, it’s not clear if it’s persistent. The incremental benefit of each use of the

service doesn’t appear to go up—you don’t get better and better rewards the more you use it.

So, as the novelty wears off, the likelihood you’ll keep using it and keep sneezing about it is

small indeed.

Finally, they forgot to focus on just one hive. The ads are running in a wide variety of

magazines, targeting a wide variety of users. Because there’s no overwhelming concentration

in just one hive, the odds of the virus popping are small indeed.

So, wise guy, what would you do instead? Well, I’d re-orient the launch from a general massmarket

consumer to a very vertical business-to-business offering. For example, imagine

putting it on the factory floor. Now, instead of a technician having to drop everything and

type in a URL to see a certain page in a manual, he could just hold up the shop manual to

the camera on his already configured PC. Once you can show that it makes an overwhelming

difference in just a few shops, the word can quickly spread across the hive.

If I really wanted to find the consumer market, I’d focus only on the techiest markets (like

the readers of Wired, but I’d create a benefit to promiscuous sneezers within that market.

Rather than creating a flat environment (each ad goes straight to the user), I’d introduce an

email component that rewards the few people who came in at the beginning for emailing

their techno-friendly friends.

My guess is that if Digimarc values the advertising at retail, they’re probably going to spend

$300 for every regular user they get. In order for it to be profitable, my guess is that they

need to get that number down to $3. Problem.

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Why Are These Cows Laughing?

If you were in Chicago last summer or lucky enough to walk through Manhattan this June,

you may have noticed a few cows in the street. Actually, hundreds of cows. Big fiberglass

cows—practically life-sized—located on heavily trafficked corners.

The cows cost under $2,000 to make, yet when they’re sold in a charity auction at the end of

the cow invasion, they’ll go for $10,000, $30,000… up to $50,000 a piece.

What happened? How did a $2,000 cow turn into a $50,000 cow?

Well, it helps that the cows are painted by local artists. Some are poignant, some are

whimsical, but they’re all extremely interesting.

However, that doesn’t explain the whole thing. After all, it’s a used cow, having sat out in the

rain and sleet and soot for months. Add to that the fact that the cows are well-designed, but

the artists behind them are by no means famous. In fact, it’s fair to say that in most cases, the

price of the cow will be among the single highest price these artists have ever received at

auction.

A $2,000 cow turns into a $50,000 cow because of amplification. The same cow sitting in a

SOHO gallery wouldn’t be famous. The same cow straight from the artist would just be art,

not a souvenir of a special moment in the history of a city.

Literally hundreds of articles have been written about the cows. But more important, tens of

thousands of conversations have occurred. It’s impossible to walk down the street with a

friend and pass a cow without mentioning it. After all, it’s a cow, just standing there in the

street.

Like all good art, these cows create conversations. But unlike art in an art gallery, these cows

are amplifying the number of conversations. By sitting there. Every day. Calmly. Sort of

like—cows.

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As you pass more cows and different cows and provocative cows, your litany of cow lore

increases. Your ability to talk in interesting ways about the cows increases. “Hey, if you think

this cow is cute, wait until you hear about the cow I saw downtown….”

All of which goes to say that street art, performance art, guerrilla marketing performances…

any sort of interruption of our regular routine can lead to a moment of conversation. When

Abby Hoffman and the Yippies dropped dollar bills in the middle of Wall Street during

lunch hour, they generated a virus among the people who were there, which spread to the

media and beyond. By getting people to interact in a way that they weren’t accustomed to,

the Yippies created more impact than they would have if they’d spent five times as much

cash running an ad.

While this sort of interruption of routine is highly amplified, it is by nature not very

persistent. If you keep interrupting the routine, the routine stops being routine and the

interruptions are. If they kept the cows there for years at a time, they’d be boring. If Abby

Hoffman dropped dollar bills every day, people would quickly stop being excited by it.

That’s why the bar for interruption and guerrilla marketers keeps moving. You can’t do what

created buzz yesterday, because there’s no way that’s going to create more buzz today.

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Never Drink Alone

Alcohol manufacturers have two spectacular advantages over most marketers. First, there’s a

huge profit margin built in. Second, drinking is a social phenomenon, perfect for spawning

ideaviruses.

Yet, given this natural platform, most distillers are lazy and just buy a huge number of

interruption marketing events—billboards, magazine ads, liquor store displays. They work

sometimes—remember, all vodka is the same, yet people gladly pay double for Absolut.

Most telling of all is the fact that St. Pauli Girl and Becks Light are made on precisely the

same brewery line in Hamburg, yet people will insist that they prefer one over the other.

Despite their successes, though, virtually all of the money spent on liquor advertising is

wasted. Last year, alcohol marketers spent more than a billion dollars advertising their wares,

but you probably can’t even name the top 20 advertisers off the top of your head.

It’s far, far more effective for alcohol manufacturers to focus on advertising to your friends,

not to you, to invest in building viruses that make it more likely that the group will discuss a

brand and eventually order it… or at the very least, admire the person who does.

One of my favorite examples was reportedly created by the brilliant marketer Bob Dorf.

When Dorf was a PR guy, I’m told he was hired by Galliano to turn their obscure liquer into

a nationwide phenomenon. Realizing that there wasn’t enough money in the world to buy

enough “Drink Galliano” billboards, he took a very different tack. He riffed on an invention

by a California bartender named Harvey and decided to popularize the Harvey Wallbanger.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 183 http://www.ideavirus.com

Harvey was a fairly primitive cartoon, a bit better drawn than Kilroy. But he was also a

drink, a drink that coincidentally used a lot of Galliano.

Dorf then set out to teach the newly-counterculture 1970s drinking crowd about this fun

(hey, it was a cartoon) drink. He printed T-shirts, taught bartenders how to mix the drink

and even sent people into popular bars and had them order the drinks (loudly).

The result was an ideavirus. When one fashion-forward powerful sneezer in a group ordered

one, he’d have to stop and explain to everyone else in the group what it was. That group

took the news to the hive, and the virus spread.

The virus wasn’t particularly persistent (from what I’m told, a Harvey Wallbanger wasn’t

that good) but it was extremely smooth. After someone told you about the drink, all you had

to do to get one was say, “I’ll have one too, please.” High velocity, the virus did exactly what

Galliano had asked for… it put the drink on the radar screen.

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The Power Of Parody

The sequel to Mission: Impossible had a huge opening this summer. People talked about the

trailer, and more important, told their friends to go see the movie after they’d been.

But how was Warner going to encourage people to see it two or three or four times? How to

get to the hive of media-friendly, time-wasting teenagers just sitting around looking for ways

to spend money? Most important, how could they cost-effectively remind people that MI:2

was out there and worth seeing again?

They decided to unleash an ideavirus that parodied their own movie.

Mission: Imp is a five minute long web film designed to go viral. It features almost famous

Hollywood stars, better than usual production values (for a web virus) and best of all, a “send

to a friend” button.

Unfortunately, it’s not very funny—so while the foundation is there, it’s not as virusworthy

as it might have been if it were made by someone who wasn’t nervous about offending Tom

Cruise. Either way, though, it’s a smart and aggressive way to get out there and start a virus

to keep a product in the public eye.

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Bee Stings And The Measles

My friend Kate was on a canoe trip in Algonquin Park and was lucky enough to find an

outhouse on a deserted island. Relishing the chance to relieve herself without having to dig a

hole in the woods, she rushed in and sat down.

Bad news for Kate, there was a beehive inside. Forty stings later, she found herself sitting in

the lake, waiting for the pain to subside. After a long paddle back to base camp, she got

herself to a doctor. The good news is that after a little pain, she was back to normal.

Unfortunately, she’s now extremely sensitive to bee stings, and has to be ever vigilant, lest she

develop an allergic reaction.

Compare that to the childhood ritual of getting the measles. You get the measles, you sit

through a week of annoying itching, and then you’re done. You’re never going to get the

measles again. You’re immune.

In the first case, exposure to an invading poison led the body to become sensitized. In the

second, it led to immunity. Your ideavirus might behave in either way.

Yes, in general, the ideavirus adores a vacuum. It will spread faster and farther when no

similar virus has preceded it. The idea that you can follow a leader to great success might

work in the old economy (like Schick in razors or Burger King in fast food) but it clearly

isn’t a winning strategy in the new one.

But here’s the interesting special case: Sometimes, after being sensitized by one ideavirus, the

market is more susceptible to a new one. The failure of the Newton, for example, made early

adopters and sneezers more aware of the PDA concept, and it paved the way for the Palm to

succeed. The second Thai restaurant in a given town is more likely to turn a profit than the

first one. Michael Jordan wasn’t the first basketball hero by any means, but our desire to have

a hero, as sparked by earlier stars like Wilt Chamberlain and Larry Bird, made it easier for

Michael to walk in and fill a role that had to be filled by someone.

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But IsnÕt It Obvious?

One of the big challenges I faced with Permission Marketing and now with Unleashing the

Ideavirus is that a lot of stuff in these books seems pretty obvious. It’s obvious that marketing

to people who want to be marketed to is more effective than interrupting people who hate

you. It’s obvious that word of mouth is more powerful than ads. It’s obvious that the winner

takes all online. It’s obvious….

But precisely because it’s so obvious, it needs to be written about. Defined. Measured.

Because it’s so obvious, it’s easy to fall into a 100-year-old habit and start doing business the

old-fashioned (expensive but easy) way.

After all, if ideavirus marketing is so obvious, why does eToys need to raise $100 million in

venture capital to pay for old-fashioned advertising? Why are the TV networks having their

best year ever in advertising revenues? Why do really smart businesses suddenly turn stupid

when faced with ad opportunities like Planetfeedback.com?

Because to embrace ideavirus marketing techniques you also have to accept a change from

the status quo. And many of the executives who are now in charge made their way to the top

by embracing the status quo, not fighting it.

It’s much easier to raise venture money with a plan that says you’re going to spend $30

million or $60 million dollars on traditional advertising than it is with a plan that says you’ll

only spend $3 million but employ elegant but difficult techniques to get the word out.

It’s much easier to run the marketing department of a Fortune 500 company around the

command-and-control interruption techniques that got the company there in the first place

than it is to allow the customer to be in charge. And it’s far more difficult to devote your

research and development efforts to building ideaviruses than it is to stick with the

traditional incremental improvements.

Even marketers have heroes. Some kids grow up wanting to be like Sandy Koufax or Bart

Starr. But most of us imagined creating the next great TV commercial or building the next

Unleashing the Ideavirus 187 http://www.ideavirus.com

great brand. We envy the folks who built Coke or Nike or Starbucks or Star Wars. But all

these heroes found their success in a different world—in a factory-based, interruptionfocused

marketing environment.

Today, the world is suddenly very different. Almost without exception, every single win on

the consumer side of the Internet has been due to marketing, and the most effective part of

that marketing is about the ideavirus.

Hotmail, Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon, GeoCities, Broadcast.com, Google—all of them succeeded

because an ideavirus was unleashed and spread.

So, yes, the underlying tenets behind the ideavirus are obvious indeed. But executing against

them, fighting the status quo, getting it right—that’s not obvious at all.

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Your CompanyÕs Worst Enemy

She might just work in your office. She’s certainly underpaid. And not very well respected.

I’m talking about the folks who staff your customer service department. Admit it—you and

most of the folks in your company would be delighted if you never heard from or about

these guys and what they do. Their job is to make angry customers go away… quietly.

In the old days, this was a pretty easy job. After all, very few people went to all the trouble to

find your mailing address, get an envelope, get a stamp and write a letter. And if you sent the

writer a coupon good for a few bucks, well that was the end of the story.

Today, it’s very different. Planetfeedback (find them at http://www.planetfeedback.com) makes it

easy for angry customers to find you. And they can carbon-copy their congressman or the

FAA or ten friends.

With digitally augmented word of mouth, an angry customer can leave an online record…

one that lasts for centuries! There’s no statute of limitations online.

Take a look at

http://www.deja.com/products/at_a_glance/glance.xp?PCID=11819&PDID=32765. As I write

this, more than 90 people have ranked Flashcom, a provider of DSL services. Flashcom is

ranked as one of the worst providers of DSL service in the country. Actual comments:

Don’t make this mistake

This is a Mickey Mouse operation. Actually, that’s an insult to Mickey Mouse. Their tech

support is incompetent, their customer service is a front, and their technicians are

useless.

Impossible to get a live person through customer service. Sent over 7 emails and have

gotten back one reply. Had to cancel because of this and they charged me an additional

$150 for early termination. Completely bad attitude.

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Fraudulent Thieves

Took my $100 deposit (in October!), didn’t deliver a thing, and won’t give it back (they

deny having any record of it). Their “customer care” people use a wide variety of lies to

string you along. STAY AWAY FROM THESE PREDATORS!!!

Now, Flashcom may be running a first-rate organization. But there’s no way to tell that from

these comments. Question: How many expensive full-page ads will the marketing

department have to run to undo the damage that these public posts are going to do to their

brand for years to come?

Compare those reviews to these for Worldspy.com:

Pound for pound the best…

After trying AltaVista, I had about given up on the notion of a “useable” free ISP. I then

stumbled upon WorldSpy… I’ve never gotten a busy signal through WorldSpy and

consistently connect at 52kbps or higher. I’ve never been disconnected and love the

lack of an ad banner blocking my view.

Great so far

Thanks to all for your reviews that helped me find this service. I imagine it is tempting to

keep something like this a secret in order to keep good service for those in the know. I

know I considered that before I wrote this review! But I felt that as I benefited from

others’ recommendations, I owed it to the Deja community to share my experiences. I

have now been using WorldSpy for a few weeks, and have been pleased with it.

Now, we’re not comparing apples to apples here (Worldspy is free) but that only reinforces

the point. The 290 or more people who posted positive reviews are busy telling all their

friends about this service, spreading the positive news. (NB that Worldspy just tanked. An

ideavirus does you no good if you can’t stay in business!)

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Finally, take a look at the reviews for Big Planet. They have more than 1,000 reviews, but it

turns out that many of them are posted by Big Planet affiliates, looking to profit from

bringing on new users.

Thus, we see one ISP on the road to failure because it appears that they’ve refused to invest

any time, money or training in the way they treat customers. We see one that has used a very

different business model (free) and combined it with excellent quality and customer service,

and we see a third that’s busy paying promiscuous sneezers to spread the word. What’s your

company doing?

Instead of putting your weakest people into customer service, what would happen if you put

your best there? Instead of asking for reports on how much pain they’re alleviating, why not

let them tell you about how much joy and delight they’re adding to the customer service

experience?

American Express, ordinarily a terrific, data-driven marketer, has gone in almost entirely the

wrong direction on this issue. Every letter and every phone call is designed to reduce costs,

not to increase personal relationship and delight. And with the amplifying power now

available to sneezers, many companies, on the web and off, will either use this as a weapon or

be the victim of it.

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Step By Step, Ideavirus Tactics:

• Make it virusworthy.

If it’s not worth talking about, it won’t get talked about.

• Identify the hive.

You won’t get the full benefit of the ideavirus until you dominate your hive.

• Expose the idea.

Expose it to the right people, and do whatever you need to do to get those people

deep into the experience of the idea as quickly as possible. Pay them if necessary,

especially at the beginning. NEVER charge for exposure if you can help it.

• Figure out what you want the sneezers to say.

You’ve got to decide what you want the sneezers to say to the population. If you

don’t decide, either they’ll decide for you and say something less than optimal, or

they won’t even bother to spend the time.

• Give the sneezers the tools they need to spread the virus.

After you’ve got a potential sneezer, make it easy for him to spread the idea. Give

him a way to send your idea to someone else with one click. Let me join your

affiliate program in sixty seconds or less. Reward the people I spread the virus to,

so I don’t feel guilty for spreading it.

• Once the consumer has volunteered his attention, get permission.

The goal of the ideavirus marketer is to use the virus to get attention, then to

build a more reliable, permanent chain of communication so that further

enhancements and new viruses can be launched faster and more effectively, under

your control this time.

• Amaze your audience so that they will reinforce the virus and keep it growing.

Where are the Cabbage Patch Kids? Why do some viruses burn out more quickly

than others? The simplest reason is that marketers get greedy and forget that a

short-term virus is not the end of the process, it’s the beginning. By nurturing the

attention you receive, you can build a self reinforcing virus that lasts and lasts and

benefits all involved.

• Admit that few viruses last forever. Embrace the lifecycle of the virus.

Cats was a terrific success on Broadway. But even great shows don’t last forever.

By understanding that the needs of the virus change over time (and that the

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benefits received change as well) the marketer can match expenditures to the

highly leveraged moments.

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The Future Of The Ideavirus: What Happens When Everyone Does It?

Interruption marketing (the kind they do on TV) is doomed to fail, because each marketer

who enters the field has more to gain by adding to the clutter than they do by trying to make

the medium work for everyone else. It’s the classic Hudson River pollution problem—once a

big factory is polluting the river, you might as well too.

Permission marketing, on the other hand, is self-limiting. When people have had enough,

they’ll stop giving permission to marketers, and thus there will be no clutter crisis. Sure,

some folks will cheat by spamming or invading privacy or buying and selling names. But

societal pressure and a few key government regulations should stop the cheaters.

But what about the ideavirus? After it dawns on marketers that it’s working, won’t we all be

flooded by offers to make us promiscuous and an incredible flow of free this and free that?

You bet. I think a few things will occur:

1. The race goes to the swift. Just as Frank Zappa and David Bowie supercharged their

careers by getting on CD early, some marketers will fill vacuums and enjoy profits for years

to come. Latecomers will get hurt.

2. The cost of spreading a virus will increase. The bounties to turn people promiscuous will

increase. The benefit to powerful sneezers will increase. When there’s huge demand for

recommendations, marketers will have to pay more to get them.

3. There will be a significant benefit to becoming a powerful sneezer. Everyone will want to

be Esther Dyson or Walter Cronkite, because that sort of genuine credential can be turned

into a profit for years and years. Thus, we’ll see fewer institutional efforts and more

individuals (free agents) who figure out that they can profit mightily by spreading their own

viruses (this manifesto is a living example of that technique).

4. It’s going to be noisy and loud and cluttered as we transition, with a few huge winners and

many satisfied marketers who dominate a hive but don’t necessarily tip. After that, once the

various media settle down, an equilibrium will return and (hopefully) the good stuff will win.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 194 http://www.ideavirus.com

Good luck. Tell me how it goes for you! Sethgodin@ideavirus.com

STEAL THIS IDEA!

Here’s what you can do to spread the word about Unleashing the Ideavirus:

1. Send this file to a friend (it’s sort of big, so ask first).

2. Send them a link to http://www.ideavirus.com so they can download it themselves.

3. Visit http://www.fastcompany.com/ideavirus to read the Fast Company article.

4. Buy a copy of the hardcover book at

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0970309902/permissionmarket.

5. Print out as many copies as you like.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 195 http://www.ideavirus.com

Acknowledgments

First, some professional sneezing (you can find all these links at http://www.ideavirus.com as well):

1. If you ever get the chance to have Red Maxwell design something for you, grab it. He’s an

extraordinary talent, and even better, a brilliant project manager and a great friend. You can

reach Red at red@designfactorynet.com.

2. One of the best ways to start and spread an ideavirus is to have your company write a

book about it. Books are still the most leveraged way to get powerful sneezers to understand

your ideas and spread them. And the partners at Lark Productions—Lisa DiMona, Karen

Watts and Robin Dellabough (robinlark@mindspring.com) are among the best I’ve ever

found at turning ideas into books. In the past twelve months, they’ve handled the words of

Kinko’s, the Dalai Lama (who wrote the foreword for Bo Lozoff’s inspiring new book) and

me. How cool is that?

3. If you haven’t been reading Fast Company, don’t panic. You can catch up on what you’ve

missed at http://www.fastcompany.com. In a world of hype and shallowness, you’ll find very little

of either here.

4. Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point, will radically shift your thinking. That’s a

good thing. Find this and his other writings at http://www.gladwell.com.

5. A lot of people haven’t kept up with Tom Peters since they bought his very first book.

Don’t hesitate! I reread his stuff as often as I can. Find it at http://www.tompeters.com.

6. I also recommend four other great writers and thinkers. Chris Meyer co-wrote Blur

among other things, and despite his protestations, is beginning to share my hairline. Jay

Levinson is the original marketing bigthinker, and you’re selling yourself short if you haven’t

picked up his books lately. And finally, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers who continue to

be way ahead of me and everyone else in how they’re deconstructing and reconstructing the

way we think about marketing.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 196 http://www.ideavirus.com

7. The guys at Peanut Press are terrific. If you’ve got a Palm, point your browser to

http://www.peanutpress.com and go get some books for it. Thanks, Mike!

I’d like also like to thank Susan Greenspan Cohen, Bob Dorf, Louise Wannier, Alison

Heisler and the wonderful people at Fast Company (especially the incredible Alan Webber)

for advice, insight and encouragement as I plowed through this manifesto. And thanks to my

role model and friend Lester Wunderman.

Jerry Colonna, Fred Wilson, Bob Greene, Tom Cohen, Seth Goldstein and their friends,

partners and associates at Flatiron Partners have been generous enough to give me a platform

and a lab to mess with a lot of new thinking. They certainly keep me on my toes, and are

nice enough to sit through my endless slide shows. Fred Wilson and Tom Cohen, though,

deserve extra thanks. Without the two of them, my internet company would have never

thrived, and you wouldn’t be reading this book. Steve Kane and Stu Roseman are, amazingly

enough, about to throw themselves into this maelstrom. Can’t wait.

Thanks to Don Epstein and David Evenchick at the Greater Talent Network in New York

City for believing in me and then being true to their word and keeping me busy.

For the last year, two people have done everything to keep things in perspective for me…

Lisa Gansky and my Dad. Thanks, guys.

Of course, as always, the real joy in my life comes from my wife Helene and our little

entrepreneurs, Alex and Max.

Unleashing the Ideavirus 197 http://www.ideavirus.com

Whats Coming in SharePoint 2013 — Redmond Developer News

Posted on by escapebusinesssolutions in Uncategorized

What’s Coming in SharePoint 2013

Many SharePoint 2013 features are already available for testing in the Office 365 previews.

Microsoft offered more details on the improvements in its SharePoint collaboration platform, which is slated to be released as a service and a server in 2013.

Many SharePoint 2013 features are already available for testing in the Office 365 previews, which the company released last month.

Jared Spataro, senior director for SharePoint product management at Microsoft, offered a quick tour of some highlights in the new SharePoint, during a demonstration for technology reviewers on Tuesday. According to Spataro, the underlying architecture hasn’t changed very much with this release, but the company has added some upgrades and I/O performance improvements.

The user experience has also been updated. Users of the new SharePoint will see a flat, spare “modern” UI, with a narrow menu bar at the top.

Microsoft also highlighted the collaboration and social networking aspects of SharePoint, which are among the product’s top uses, according to a Forrester Research survey. However, nothing was really said during the talk about Microsoft’s Yammer acquisition, which will bring Yammer’s enterprise social networking technologies across SharePoint, Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics and Skype.

Better Tagging
In general, Microsoft has improved the metadata aspects in the new SharePoint, allowing users to tag content while posting, Spataro said. People are considered first-class objects in SharePoint. They can be followed, by SharePoint users, but it’s also possible to follow documents, sites and tags across a Web site. SharePoint also points users to content based on a “suggested sites” feature. Users can hover over user profiles and get access to their contact cards, which bring in profile information, including info from LinkedIn and Facebook social networking pages.

My Site in the new SharePoint has its functionality split into three hubs: Newsfeed, SkyDrive Pro and Sites, as explained in this SharePoint team blog. The Newsfeed application has a sort of Facebook-like appearance with photos and e-mail threads, as well as a “Like” button. The Sites application is a tracker of site locations that are important to the user. SkyDrive Pro is a cloud-based storage place for files that works with SharePoint. Spataro said that SkyDrive Pro replaces what used to be called “SharePoint Documents” or “My Documents” in earlier editions, adding that it had been renamed to highlight Microsoft’s investments in consumer cloud storage. Microsoft also offers a free SkyDrive service for consumers.

SkyDrive Pro Replacing SharePoint Workspaces
SkyDrive Pro provides storage, synchronization and sharing capabilities for users. Cloud-based apps will sync to the desktop app by just clicking on the desktop. There’s also drag-and-drop file uploading capabilities from the desktop to the browser-based app, and even drag-and-drop capabilities within the browser-based app, which Spataro called “a new modality for people.” He claimed that he works more in Web apps these days because of the richness of the applications. SkyDrive Pro works with various Office Web Apps, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.

SkyDrive Pro has access to all of the new SharePoint capabilities. “All of the content manageable in SharePoint can be managed in SkyDrive Pro,” Spataro said.

The fate of SharePoint Workspace (previously known as “Groove”) in SharePoint 2013 got cleared up during the Q&A session. Groove was the invention of former Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, whose retirement was announced in October 2010.

“SharePoint Workspace was the way that we did document sync and offline access with the previous version of SharePoint,” Spataro explained. “And in fact, SharePoint Workspace was the evolution of the Groove client. The document store, share and sync capabilities that I showed you are actually based on the next evolution of that SharePoint Workspace. We actually used the underlying component that came from Groove, part of the sync engine, to do it. And going forward, our strategy will be to focus on SkyDrive Pro that I showed you today.”

He added that people can still get access to SharePoint Workspace, “but our go-forward strategy investment will be focused on SkyDrive Pro.”

Team Site Gets OneNote
The Team Site is considered the “center of gravity for people in SharePoint,” Spataro said, and Microsoft has enhanced it by adding a centralized OneNote built into it. OneNote is a Microsoft Office application that lets users store photos and text in a sort of digital scrapbook. The OneNote that’s part of Team Site is capable of synchronization, and it can be viewed on various mobile devices with “the same rich view,” Spataro contended. The Team Site also has its own newsfeed, which will sync up with a user’s main Newsfeed. Users tend to use this newsfeed service as a replacement for e-mail, he added.

Spataro said that the new SharePoint is about task completion and using social interactions to do work, so there’s a My Tasks interface that users can plot against a timeline. It’s capable of drag-and-drop operations, so users can create a list of tasks in Excel and drop the file into tasks lists. It’s possible to edit in real time and assign tasks to different people. The whole timeline is viewable in a “project summary” page. Spataro suggested this approach is an improvement over past SharePoint releases where it was “tough to track things.”

There are some SharePoint business intelligence improvements enabled by SQL Server 2012. For instance, the Excel Web App can be used to display a Power View executive dashboard, which graphically displays data. It allows slice-and-dice operations to be performed using the data or the data can be plotted over time. With these capabilities, Spataro said that Microsoft is bringing together social, task management and business insights.

Lastly, Spataro pointed to the Microsoft partner ecosystem and the extra support users can get though SharePoint apps. The apps are available in the SharePoint library or they can be downloaded from the SharePoint Store.

Spataro said he left out a lot in his presentation, noting that FAST search in the new SharePoint now has e-discovery capabilities across SharePoint, Exchange and Lync file shares. Search was one of the SharePoint features that participants in Forrester’s survey said they least liked. However, it’s apparently improved in the new SharePoint.

An overview of the new SharePoint features was described earlier in this blog post by Jeff Teper, corporate vice president of SharePoint.

About the Author

Kurt Mackie is online news editor, Enterprise Group, at 1105 Media Inc.