Viral marketing, going viral - Dawkins and Hofstadter

[Garson O'Toole]

Tom Zurinskas wrote:
[On April 16, 2011] Those of us on yahoo email see this clip described
as "going viral", meaning getting lots of hits.  Not a bad thing.
[On March 15, 2011] You'd think "viral newscasting" or "gone viral"
would be a bad thing.  See below. …
End excerpt

OED (Draft additions January 2005) has "viral marketing" and "to go
viral". The first cite is dated 1989 for "viral marketing".

viral, adj. Derivatives
Chiefly Marketing. Of, designating, or involving the rapid spread of
information (esp. about a product or service) amongst customers by
word of mouth, e-mail, etc. to go viral : to propagate in such a
manner; to (be) spread widely and rapidly. Recorded earliest in viral
marketing n. at Additions.

1989    PC User (Nexis) 27 Sept. 31   The staff almost unanimously
voted with their feet as long waiting lists developed for use of the
Macintoshes.‥ ‘It's viral marketing. You get one or two in and they
spread throughout the company.’

viral marketing n. an approach to marketing which relies on customers
to spread information about a product or service, esp. by e-mail.
Viral marketing was mentioned on the ADS list in 2005. Viral video was
mentioned in 2009.
End excerpt

I think that the conceptual genesis of these terms may be traced to
The Selfish Gene (1976) by Richard Dawkins where the term and notion
of "meme" appears. (The OED has an entry for meme and cites this
book.) However, Dawkins constructs "meme" on an analogy to "gene" and
he does not use the word viral. Of course viruses have genes.

The terms "viral sentences" and "viral formulas" were used by Douglas
R. Hofstadter in a 1983 article about the cultural transmission of
ideas. I suspect that the current use of "viral" is rooted in the
popularizations written by Dawkins and Hofstadter.

Cite: 1983 January, Scientific American, "On Viral Sentences and
Self-Replicating Structures." by Douglas R. Hofstadter. (Not verified
on paper)

There seems to be an earlier 1981 Scientific American book by
Hofstadter called "Understanding Understanding" that contains
"virus-like sentences". The exact terms "viral marketing" and "go
viral" do not appear.

http://books.google.com/books?id=RrMRAQAAMAAJ&q=viral#search_anchor
Garson

On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 10:44 AM, Tom Zurinskas <truespel at hotmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â spoof of royal wedding "goes viral"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Those of us on yahoo email see this clip described as "going viral", meaning getting lots of hits. Â Not a bad thing.
>
> http://royalwedding.yahoo.com/blogs/the-royals-get-spoofed-4952
>
>
> Tom Zurinskas, Conn 20 yrs, then Tenn 3, NJ 33, now FL 9.
> The FREE English-based phonetic converters, URL and text , are at truespel.com
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