Viral Loop, Adam L. Penenberg
Viral Loop, Adam L. Penenberg
3 Rating(s)
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Viral Loop
From Facebook to Twitter, How Today's Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves

Author: Adam L. Penenberg

Narrator: Richard Allen

Unabridged: 10 hr 22 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/27/2009


Synopsis

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.

About Adam L. Penenberg

Adam L. Penenberg is a contributing writer to Fast Company and a professor of journalism at New York University. He has also written for Forbes, the New York Times, Slate, Wired, the Economist, Mother Jones, and Playboy. A former senior editor at Forbes, he garnered national attention in 1998 for unmasking serial fabricator Stephen Glass of the New Republic. Penenberg is the author of Spooked: Espionage in Corporate America and Tragic Indifference: One Man's Battle With the Auto Industry Over the Dangers of SUVs.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Robert on May 21, 2011

My initial thinking was that this book would provide reasons for the viral spread of something. Rather it turned out to be more about the stories behind products and ideas that gone viral. That still proved very interesting and seems to reinforce the concept that there is no specific 'formula' for w......more

Goodreads review by Adarsh on May 01, 2018

A great introduction to the concept of virality. Walks you down to some of the very powerful viral products, at the same time also covers some of the very successful failures. Mostly covers the social industry from mid-1990's to late 2000's. Covers the products alongside the evolution of the web, ri......more

Goodreads review by Muhammad on July 11, 2020

Early Attempt to Sequence the Genome of Digital Virality Most of us know the word “viral” when it comes to the popularity of online content, yet few relate it to the infamous, simple organisms which have wreaked havoc for millennia in the offline world and decades in the online one. A virus always co......more

Goodreads review by PurposeFocusCommitment on September 05, 2024

My thoughts about the book: Viral Loop is an interesting and easy-to-read book in which Adam L. Penenberg explains how some of our today’s most successful companies became what they are, and why some were almost too big to fail, but still failed in the end. Each chapter is its own journey for each ap......more

Goodreads review by Abhijeet on March 16, 2017

The "title" and the "cover design" mend the perfect impression , good enough to make the book look exciting and promising. But unfortunately the book wasn't any good (atleast to me) , except few of the stories like that of Tupperware , others couldn't make stick to the book. I believe its the narratio......more