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Religion and the viral web at SXSWi

At SXSW Interactive, Internet-speak gets old, fast. So the above slide, used in a panel on viral media featuring BuzzFeed‘s Jessica Amason, was a much appreciated break.

Judaism, Amason argued, was a religion which rested on its laurels, and didn’t make a lot of gestures to attract people into the faith.

Mormonism, on the other hand, has historically gone for as many followers as it could get. It has evangelicalism as a built-in tenet.

So over time, the number of followers of Judaism remained constant, while Mormon population shot up. Both are nearing equal at present.

The point of this little diversion is that quality of religion – Amason seemed to imply Judaism was the better religion, and the audience agreed – is not displayed in sheer numbers. “Judaism is a quality religion, but quality is NOT a growth strategy,” her next slide displayed.

Jessica Amason at SXSWi

Apply this to the viral web. It’s not necessarily the content that will bring the most eyeballs to your site, but an evangelical-like promotional formula. And, no surprise, Buzzfeed has such a formula.

It uses a viral rank, the “social reproduction rate” of its media. It has code that follows how many times items are shared online, and applies a number to that media. That moves up and down the BuzzFeed site. To be simplistic, it pays extras special attention to sharing.

Then it applies advertising based on that rank. The lower the rank, the higher the cost. So advertisers have incentive to attach their ads to viral content, and further incentive to produce good ads that won’t harm the viral rank.

Amason flashed a series of formulas across the screen, but gist was that value is in numbers.[rssbreak]

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