What I’ve learned is that the foundation of viral growth is rooted in motivational psychology and language.

thinking through how to make your product viral often helps you plan to give it network effects of various kinds.

First, is our pack animal psychology. As a pack animal, we’re constantly thinking about our status, how we’re perceived, where we fit in, etc. Those constant mental loops serve as the foundation of our motivations to share.

Second, reduce the friction to sharing. Design your product so that it minimizes the effort and thinking required to share.

make your product broken unless people share

when any of us consider sharing something online or offline, we unconsciously make a trade-off between benefit and costs

How might sharing this benefit me (the sharer) or you (the audience/recipient) either via utility or via status/reputation?
How much time and effort (friction) will I have to spend to share this?

1. Status

This is the big one. It can also be termed “belonging,” “prestige,” “respect,” “scarcity” or “in-the-know.” People often try to show this by associating themselves with other high-status people or central nodes in the network.

They also try to show this by joining products that are exclusive, like Facebook was at the beginning

People also try to show their status within products. On social media, people share the accomplishments of their friends

Status is by nature scarce because it indicates the hierarchy of us in the pack.

Access to something scarce or exclusive motivates people to share because they can get high status from the people they share it with.

2. Identity Projection

We want to be able to show who we are and be vindicated in our identity.

It gives us an opportunity to have a point of view — a statement that people can agree with or disagree with. We mostly seek validation in that point of view.

We are compelled to share things that we find useful because we want to be perceived as helpful and nurturing to our tribes.

Fear is embedded in the most primal part of our psychology. If we sense danger, our brain has evolved to pay attention.

Nextdoor’s early growth came from people wanting to know what was going on in their neighborhood and what kind of threats to their safety they might face. The app Citizen grew for a similar reason, and it was also why Trulia’s crime map helped them grow.

People who are trying to organize their world because of their personality are highly motivated to share tools that help them to optimize and organize.

People share them not only because it makes others perceive them as more organized and efficient, but also because it helps them bring other people into the same protocol of organization

The sweet spot is in the middle — we are attracted by things that are new enough to not be stale, but not too new to be strange.

we are always looking for the next new thing. We are motivated to share new products and new information because it makes us look like we’re ahead of the (Wundt) curve.

A lot of what we share online has to do with the fact that we want to get a boost, believe we are good, believe we are smart or believe we are worthy. We want to feel positive about ourselves and our place in the world.

People shared their results because they wanted to be validated and boost their self-esteem.

People share things that allow others to vicariously live through them