Raheem Abid is a student in the Bentley University masters of marketing analytics program, and he's not satisfied with how videos and content go viral on the Web today.
"People, since the rise of social media, have desired to go viral," Abid says. "They're limited by the resources at their disposal, which unfortunately are not enough. Going viral requires either money or tons of followers, friends, or subscribers."
Without a big cash investment or a well-established audience, social media users are doomed to obscurity, regardless of the value of the content they publish in many cases. Abid's company, Viral LLC, which he co-founded with Bentley alumni Andrew Perez, aims to change that.
"Viral's purpose is to give a voice to the person who regards themselves as the 'nobody,'" Abid said. "[It's] designed to allow for anyone — regardless of how much money, friends, followers and subscribers they have — to make it big."
Viral Aims to Take Back the Internet
The young grad student's concept is simple. It focuses on the influence an ordinary social media user has in finding entertaining, quality content. Much like Facebook or Twitter, posts are shared with other users, and as more people distribute the content, it snowballs into a viral sensation. The difference is that Abid is speeding up the snowball, allowing users to share things faster and achieve virality sooner. Here's the gist of how the concept (currently in testing at MIT) works:
- You upload a piece of text, video or photo to Viral the same as any other social media site.
- That content is immediately shared with 10 users.
- Those 10 people can choose to share your content or not.
- If one person chooses to share the text, photo or video, it's immediately distributed to another 10 users who repeat the decision process.
- For every one user that shares your content, another 10 people will see it.
If people love your material, it's possible that it could be shared by over 100 users in a matter of minutes or even seconds. The process continues exponentially, allowing popular videos to be discovered quicker than ever and removing the need for ordinary people to pay to share their content.
Destroying the Pay-for-Popularity Method
Companies that specialize in making content go viral are a dime a dozen, but many of them fall into the same sort of unsustainable practices, according to Abid.
"There are a lot of companies doing this, but they're all asking for money," Abid said. "And they don't have formulas and they're charging too much."
For some companies, this means allowing people to buy followers and friends. Often, the profiles are fake accounts and bots that don't care about the quality of the content and muddle the otherwise positive viral media experience users and creators enjoy. For users, the material that's being "publicized" may be lackluster in quality. For creators, those new connections are more fraud than follower, and their money is wasted on people who are not engaged or don't even exist.
Viral LLC doesn't rely on fake subscribers, and the system doesn't cost anything. The goal is simply to streamline the sharing process and give more people the opportunity to see their material and cast judgment themselves. And it seems as though Abid's idea is gaining some traction.
The Future for Viral LLC
"So far, five venture capital entities have been in touch with us," Abid said. "Bentley professors, if they didn't play a direct role in talking to these investors, played a huge indirect role through allowing us to use their names in emails to VC firms and pointing us toward the firms with whom we'd be a good fit."
It's all still a work in progress, however. As a full-time student, Abid has a lot of work on his plate aside from starting a Web business. And he's not afraid to do it right. The two Bentley founders are interested in creating a likable user experience and a successful strategy first, rather than rolling out something prematurely. To do that, Abid is capitalizing on feedback from his masters in business analytics professors and fellow students.
"They've offered their time to help us rethink and restyle strategy, launch and expansion plans, marketing strategy — you name it. Bentley professors have been of great help, and I'm sure we'll be turning to them again for advice as we expand."
Stay up to date on the project progress by following @projectvirality on Twitter. Or, support the project on Kickstarter.