Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today's Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves

by Adam L. Penenberg Narrated by Richard Allen

Overview

Many of the most successful Web 2.0 companies, including MySpace, YouTube, eBay, and rising stars like Twitter and Flickr, are prime examples of what journalist Adam L. Penenberg calls a "viral loop"-to use the product means having to share it with others. After all, what's the sense of being on Facebook if none of your friends are? The end result is a business that spreads rapidly, scales quickly, and has the promise to create staggering wealth. In this game-changing, essential book, Penenberg-who identified the phenomenon in a ground-breaking cover story for Fast Company-tells the fascinating, vivid story of the entrepreneurs who first harnessed the unprecedented potential of viral loops to create the successful online businesses (some with billion-dollar valuations) that we have all grown to rely on.



While Viral Loop is fascinating for Penenberg's savvy, incisive explanation of the concept, it's even more valuable for its prescriptive nature. Throughout the book, Penenberg illustrates how any kind of business can uncork viral loops to benefit its own bottom line, even retrofitting the concept for the offline world.



Penenberg explores viral loops and their impact on contemporary American business, while illustrating how all kinds of businesses-from the smallest start-ups to nonprofit organizations to the biggest multinational corporations-can use the paradigm-busting power of viral loops to enable their business through technology.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

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

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

Seth Godin

"In tight engaging prode, Penenberg captures the essence of the ever-scaling power of the virus. It's not just for geeks anymore."

Ken Auletta

"Adam Penenberg's lively book opens a window to all of our futures."

Chris Anderson

"One of the most astounding things about the Web age is how the best advertising is often no advertising at all. Penenberg masterfully explains how this works with case studies of products that were designed to spread. Every product can use a dose of this technique; this is the book to get to learn how."

Dan Heath

"If you want to understand all things viral, this is the place to start. Penenberg's reporting gives us a ringside seat to some of the biggest viral success stories in history, from Tupperware to Ning."

Jeff Jarvis

"Penenberg discovers the perpetual motion machine for business and marketing. . . . Buy this book. Catch a virus. Make a fortune."

Douglas Rushkoff

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

Robert Safian

"Penenberg has unlocked the secret to the most successful digital businesses. An indispensable read."

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171301835
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	10/27/2009
Edition description:	Unabridged

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