Like Me! Retweet Me!
It seems that every online article these days practically begs its readers to “like” it, “retweet” it or somehow pass it along to fellow social media mavens. Have you ever wondered what it is that makes these articles like- or retweet-worthy? It happens to be more than just because the spirit moves you.
Penn Professor Jonah Berger (who, ironically, sort of looks like Jesse Eisenberg) recently concluded that a “physiological ‘arousal’” elicited by particular emotions or even physical states is what causes people to share certain things over others. While this “sharing” characteristic is especially facilitated by high rates of social media use, humans have actually been doing it for thousands of years. Berger believes that this information could trigger new tactics for people and companies who hope to spread information on an even wider scale.
At the risk of sounding meta, we dare you like or retweet this post that explains the article that explains the reasons why people like and retweet posts and articles.
Tags: News, cool shit, facebook, marketing, social media, stuff penn people like, the social network, twitter
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By Neighborhood Critic on June 30, 2011 at 3:05 pm
You (this publication) love attributing everything to Penn. This idea has been exhausted in publications for the last two decades. All of the sudden some Penn professor says it and its gold. See: Jonah Lehrer, Malcolm Gladwell, Kahneman, Tversky, and every behavioral/neuro-economist
@NEIGHBORHOOD CRITIC
By no means is this post attempting to attribute this conclusion exclusively to Professor Berger; it is instead recognizing his recent work. Of course there are many other – incredibly reputable – individuals who have made equally impressive contributions to this field. On the other hand, http://underthebutton.com/about/
You don’t mention in the post what your comment mentions (that there are more contributions).
Also, I wanted to point out the gist of the many complaints about the “boring” and “forced” nature of this purpose. This and several other “Penn” publications severely limit the talent of the writers on the staff. Be more interesting (not a criticism on you, individually).
I don’t explicitly mention that in the post, but I also never say that he’s the only one to have ever had the idea. If that was implied, it was not my intention.