The Classic Viral Marketing - Hotmail.com

What comes to mind when you hear or see the term Viral Marketing? A virus? Something spreading like wildfire? Something that is multiplying out of control?

However Viral Marketing has nothing to do with medicine. The term appropriately describes a method of business promotion that can increase your business exponentially. In other words, it can expose your business to a lot of people in a very short time.

The classic example of Viral Marketing is Hotmail.com, one of the first free web-based e-mail service, was started by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith in 1996. Viral marketing is more powerful than third-party advertising because it conveys an implied endorsement from a friend and family. Hotmail grew its subscriber base from zero to 12 million users in 18 months, and today the number of Hotmail subscribers worldwide has exceeded 65 million. Moreover, Hotmail became the largest email provider in several countries, like Sweden and India.

We were amazed at how quickly Hotmail spread over the global network. The rapid adoption pattern was that of a network virus. People typically send e-mails to their associates and friends, both geographically close and scattered around. Therefore, people signed up the Hotmail service by the thousands each day.