Lance Tokuda from RockYou talks about the essential ingredients for creating a viral application on social platforms. Today six out of ten social media sites permit third-party embeddable applications which translates to almost 300M users. The number of users accessible in this way is expected to triple in the next six months!

The numbers tell the harsh truth. 99% of all applications for social media fail (i.e. they acquire less than 1M users). What should you look to do to reduce the chance of failure?

Viral growth requires referral traffic. Referral traffic comes from two sources:
1. Install flow - Make sure the installation of your application is simple and straight forward. This is the opportunity to get the user to invite his friends. Why do you think Facebook asks you if you would like to automatically invite the contacts from your email inbox?
2. Engagement Flow - This is the way a person uses your application. The primary flow (i.e. writing a review for a movie) should have a mechanism to invite new people (through sharing, for example).

Every flow has two variables: x (invited friends) and y (accept rate). The virality of your app can be determined by multiplying these two variables together. If x*y > 1, then your application is viral.

Therefore, if a user invites 20 friends and 6% accept, your application is viral. (20 * 6% = 1.2). Don’ worry if one flow isn’t viral, since the result of each flow can be added. If the sum of the flows is still less than 1, consider using advertising to supplement your growth.

Viral applications are used primarily as a marketing vehicle to reach a broad audience. It won’t work if you are targeting a specific demographic.

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