Another one of Pete's Law's of Community Dynamics:
Something is viral when at least as many people know about it as have been told by the original source, plus one.
So, we have a message that got emailed out to a number of people, let's say 1000. This email message had a coupon code from a retailer that could be traced back to its source. If less than 1001 different people ( other than those getting the first email from the retailer ) can be said to have used the code, it is not "viral". Call this "collateral" instead. If 500 new people use that coupon because it's spread a little, it's collateral success; not really viral.
I have just come from a retailer meeting where one marketing professional let the others gathered know that their recent coupon code had "gone viral". I asked after percentages of new use, and was interested to learn that if a coupon code was used by -anyone- other than the original emailees, around the office that emailing and code were agreed to have "gone viral".
Hmmmmm.
The above Law is for unambiguously stating something has "gone viral". It could certainly be argued that if a million people heard your message when you delivered it, and now 500,000 more know about it, possibly it's viral. So size of the overall first receiver group might matter. Also, I suppose time matters as well... if you reach the magic number of being viral ( original listeners + 1... the Pete Point ) but it happened 10 years after your message, could it truly have been said to have "gone viral"?
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