In our world today, what matters most to everyone is appearances. This can range all the way from your country to you and the people who live on your street. No matter where you are or what you are doing, you know there is a way for you to look and a specific way for you to act. In America, appearances are enormous, and dropping how you should look and behave can be detrimental to your social life. We care about appearances so much it leads to us needing to be in control of our everyday lives down to the most minor details. We have raised a country of control freaks who need to be at the forefront of whatever they are doing. We thought this would create nationwide individualism, and instead, it has only created mass conformity. We need to be so in control of everything, which is why some guy I forgot the name of came up with the term "spreadability". He stated "virality" took away the human aspect and control that we have. How much control do we really have, though? Let's talk about it.
Viral & infectious
For starters, the book is about multiple different ways content spreads and circulates today. Before my time, a word was used to describe the phenomenon under an umbrella. This is the phrase to go "viral," which, of course, means you blew up and made it big. Commercials went viral, people went viral, and even apps and formats went viral. It was called this because whatever it was seemed to spread from person to person without much thought or effort, much like a virus. While this word can hold negative connotations, so can everything depending on the context.
The negative connotations come from the first appearance of the word in Sci-fi, where it describes bad ideas that spread like germs. The spreading of mass hysteria or a tune stuck in your head falls under this term of being viral. But I can guarantee you no person alive except for our author cares enough. No one remembers the first appearance of the word, nor should they care. Words are words and only have the power you give them. At the end of the day, a virus is an infectious agent that needs a host to reproduce and spread. What is the transfer of media but an Infective (hopefully) agent that you want to spread from viewer to viewer? You want whatever you are selling to be as infectious as the flu, and that is a good thing!
Spreads Like Butter
The term spreadability is like the little brother to virality. It's the angel child because it still cares about what its parents think, and therefore he can do no wrong. To our authors, it is a more palatable term for them, and they see it as more markable. It is the new term to describe increasingly popular media and pop culture circulation forms. Critics of this say, however, "spreadability, spreadable, or spread" are not suitable placeholders for terms like virality. You spread condiments, sauces, and cheese on a board, but how much of Media do we actually "spread"?
Some view spreadability as a more correct term to describe what stickiness is. In contrast, stickiness is the measurement of how many people view your media, how long they view it for and did they subscribe or add anything meaningful? Where spreadability does not care too much for the little things but rather how many people they are connected to. So they would measure instead how frequently and how far our media is reaching. This emphasizes user content and the creativity put into it. You ensure your content is unique and malleable to ensure whatever you make can circulate to various audiences and even have different purposes.
Not The Same
To me, it does not sound like spreadability should completely take over and be the new term when referring to virality or even in terms of stickiness. The author compared spreadability to these two terms, and I think that is where he is incorrect and loses me. These terms seem to talk about three different ideas; therefore, they all have room to exist just in their perspective realms where they are relevant to their conversation. Let me explain how I see it.
In The End
The term stickiness is our odd man out. Has nothing to do with the direct transferring of media. Instead, it has to deal with how impactful the media is. If it is a good newsletter, then people will subscribe. If it is a great game, then you will stay on the website for hours.
Virality has to do with the almost unconscious transferring of media done by VIEWERS, at least in my eyes. I send my friends things all the time without thinking because those are my friends, and I laugh, so I have an 85% chance of transmitting this and getting a laugh back. But virality can also be used by content creators. They all hope that their creation will be viral among their viewers. Which ties back into stickiness. They work together but are not the same.
Lastly, we have the term spreadability, which I view as a term you can really only use towards content creators. How spreadable is their media with the work they put forth? Can a person on TikTok spread this info to Twitter and get the same laugh? Can the media be held in two different rooms and get the same attention?
Spreadability is for the creator of the content, virality is for the viewer who receives it, and stickiness is for who that viewer sends it to and how impactful it has become. See, they all can coexist and aid one another, but none of these terms can replace the others.
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