The Internet has done some interesting things in the lives of people. Businessmen balk at the raw profitability of a company like Google, which really doesn't seem to do anything or provide anything from a "traditionalist" perspective. People wonder at how quickly Facebook and social networking took off, and why it's starting to replace an actual social life in terms of getting people to connect and interact. Marketers seethe at the notion that some kid in a furnished apartment in Sarasota is capable of creating a marketing and branding "campaign" that outstrips years of calculation and hard work within a matter of minutes.

Yet the allure of "going viral" has clearly taken root, such that more than a few businesses are wondering how they can do it themselves. Of course, to build something that can go viral, there must first be understanding of how things end up that way in the first place.

Some things are just inherently viral by nature, which is a marketer's wet dream. In these cases, people get value from the product or service, but they can get more by spreading it to other people. This can be done through structured mechanisms or through old word-of-mouth, but it is done. All the marketer needs to do is to simply start seeding it, handing it out to certain early adopters and letting it spread from there. The seeding period is notoriously slow, but things tend to build and grow over time. This is how Skype got its start, after all.

Other items hit viral levels because the item itself is used to communicate things. For example, some electronics products allow users to make status updates or tweets using a wireless Internet connection. The only difference is that the message will include something about where it was posted from, such as what device or the location that provided the wireless network. This is involuntary viral marketing, since the consumer does not have any control over whether or not these "add-ons" appear, though they're usually small and aren't intrusive enough to be a problem for the general public. Apple does this with a disruptive amount of frequency – as if the company's marketing wasn't obnoxious enough.

Then there are campaigns that become viral through no planned or intended detail, but through sheer desire of people to spread it around. Purely word of mouth virality is something that is hard to achieve, primarily because building to achieve this means that it becomes forced, which can turn off the people that a company would be hoping to be the first to spread the word.