1. Artificial virality. Huge audience. Capture a part of the audience, you're in for a good userbase. Exponential increase. This is his Hotmail example.
2. Natural virality. "John has sent you $20 over PayPal. Create an account to transfer to your bank." Built in a certain fashion that forces it to spread virally. Who wouldn't take twenty bucks?
equating ebola and AIDS to hotmail and youtube. has human life become so cheap?
i don't have a problem with the use of virus outbreaks being used to explain network effects, i do have a contention with the apparent disregard for the reality of, say, ebola spreading through zaire.
You know that ebola has basically been cured? It was funded by the US government for military purposes, I think they are stockpiling the vaccine in case ebola is ever used as a biological weapon. http://www.thinkgene.com/vaccine-for-ebola-virus/
I hear you. It's easy to fall into that trap when spending so much time with bits and bytes. The trap really becomes deadly when we make the leap from hackers to entrepreneurs, where the people are as important as the tech.
Go easy on OP, though. He didn't invent the "virus" metaphor, he was just writing about it. He didn't have a whole lot of other options to make his point.
(Point of clarification: AIDS is not spread. HIV is spread. A small but critical distinction.)
I'm not the one who modded you down, but I'll bite.
You have a problem with the author's irreverence towards virus outbreaks in Africa. Regardless of whether this is "correct", it is not of interest to (some large proportion of) readers here.
If you want to criticise the authors' tone, the comments attached to his own blog may be a more effective venue.
Your comment sounds thin-skinned and self-righteous. People don't like to be told what examples they can and can not use in their similes. Also, your shift key appears to be broken.
1. Artificial virality. Huge audience. Capture a part of the audience, you're in for a good userbase. Exponential increase. This is his Hotmail example.
2. Natural virality. "John has sent you $20 over PayPal. Create an account to transfer to your bank." Built in a certain fashion that forces it to spread virally. Who wouldn't take twenty bucks?