A lot of people have asked me about my interest in Facebook and what I mean by “viral looping” and Facebook as a distribution platform. Here’s how it works.

1. There’s a feed on your Facebook homepage that tells you what your friends are doing
2. Included in that feed are the applications they are adding or removing from their profile page, which is the semi-private part of Facebook. (BTW, the content of Visual Bookshelf, which comes from Amazon, is also shared meaning that the viral effect extends beyond the app itself.)
3. Your network of contacts see what you are adding and you see what they are adding, eventually this snowballs.

Case in point is the Visual Bookshelf application that I saw Susan Scrupski add, which I then added to my profile page. Today, 7 of my “friends” added it to their Facebook pages… I don’t even know what company makes this app and I’ve certainly never been “touched” by their marketing.

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