He's at it again!

[freakytigger]

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/02/viral-growth-trumps-lots-of-faux-followers.html

Even by Seth Godin's standards this is supreme bollocks.

Comments

[martinskidmore]

Well I learned that the more new people an idea attracts, the more the idea has attracted people. I'm not clear there was any intent more useful than that.

[jauntyalan]

the insight being that if you multiply something by less than 1 the number goes down, but if you multiply it by something over 1 it keeps getting bigger.

MY MIND IS BLOWN

[dubdobdee]

was there a moment back in the day when SG said something actually non-fatuous that made him his name?

[freakytigger]

SG's big initial idea was "permission marketing" - he realised fairly early on that banner ads and spam weren't very good ways of marketing things compared with getting people to sign up and/or talk about what you were doing. It seems blindingly obvious now but I think the online marketing thinking back then really was "OK how can we make sure dudes see our horrible pop up / how fucking massive can we make this banner ad and get away with it." And now only SOME online marketing thinking involves that.

This was back in 1998? 99? So he's kind of the founder of social media marketing, and indeed the discipline has proceeded with the kind of rigour and attention to detail he exemplifies.

[freakytigger]

"At 14, Godin took his first steps into entrepreneurship printing Biorhythms at the local university and selling them for $30 each."

[infov0re]

Jesus, it's like a mewling five-year-old has discovered maths for the first time and thinks the grownups will be impressed.

[boyofbadgers]

Someone should tell him the story about the king, the single grain of corn and the chessboard that doubles the number of grains on each successive square. With any luck his head might explode.

[ms_bracken]

I love his open refusal to be bounded by the population of the world.