Facebook Virus?
Posted January 10th, 2008 by Char Lyn
Last night at about 9 pm the Facebook app SuperWall had 3,090,929 “daily active users.” As I write this post, it has 3,551,493. That’s an increase of almost half a million users in less than 24 hours.
Why?
Some time in the last week or so, the SuperWall developers added a new feature: Forward (fast). Clicking this link at the bottom of a SuperWall post automatically posts the wall message onto the SuperWall of all of your friends.
A picture of a husky puppy dog has shown up on my SuperWall three times with the exact same message, “click forward….to see what happens!” Fortunately, I was warned by an office mate before clicking forward.
While this is will likely be a very successful campaign for increasing SuperWall installation and usage, it feels a little like a con. It’s to close to that bad type of virus that proliferates without the infector’s knowledge. The good viral campaigns are only passed with the infector’s full knowledge.
Entry Filed under: Social Networking, Viral Marketing
2 Comments Add your own
1. Irony | January 11th, 2008 at 3:51 am
Thanks for this. I really wished for an exploding dog, or perhaps the puppy really would get it, unlike the multiple facebook forwarders who have involved me, several times. It’s no different to the lost child, seriously ill teenager or ‘I need an operation” A quick GooGle reveals the fraud, as in this case too! But credit where credit is due, bread and circuses, facebook is the new Big Top!
2. Kristin | January 11th, 2008 at 8:57 am
I wanted to see what the husky would do!!! I blame Aaron. If he hadn’t been curious about the darn dog I wouldn’t have naively spammed all my friends with it. It’s all Hughes fault ;]
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