The Matthew Effect – Linking and How Things Become Viral in Social Media | Futurelab – An international marketing strategy consultancy
It is easy to see how this transfers into social media – the more something is spread the more it will be spread even further by word of mouth. Imagine two pieces of content of equal quality, interest or importance. It is the content that has been linked to, retweeted, forwarded or otherwise referred to that is more likely to become viral. For Hensel, “Social media is a linking machine” and the more links you can get to a piece of content the more likely that content is to become viral when compared to a similar piece.
via futurelab.net