1. The product is the viral. The thing you're building has to be shareable. You can't layer virality true on top of a product that isn't viral.
2. Have a huge interest overlap. What % of people are interested in entomology? Few. Not viral. What % like puppies? Lots. Good. Can be viral. Like horoscopes, funny videos, weird news... All things that lots of people are interested in.
3. Grab attention: novelty (as in the news), sex, violence (as in the news, following the famous adage “If it bleeds, it leads”…), mystery, emotions, strong visuals, stories, and talking about the users themselves.
4. Don't give everything away on the viral itself. If you do, people will just consume it and not click through.
5. Give the payoff immediately after the user goes to your product. Give them what they came for. Don’t bury it under 10 minutes of clicks, email sign-ups, and all the other things that your product has to offer. People don’t care.
6. Reach the viral point right away. Push the viral point as close to the beginning of the user experience as possible. Otherwise you will lose most of them before they spread your product.
7. Give good incentives for both the sender and the receiver.
8. The viral must reflect the identity of the users. What you share determines who you are. It reflects what you stand for.
9. Make it easy to send to as many friends as possible
10. Layer viral channels: newsfeed, notifications, emails... The more, the easier it is to spread
11. Understand how the social platforms work into the detail of the APIs, and then exploit that.
Egyptian pyramids are not where they're supposed to be. Why?
Why is Cairo, the biggest African city, where it is today?
Alexandria?
Why do over 100M Egyptians live so densely clustered?
These questions all have the same answer. Look:
1st map: population density
2nd map: satellite
The "flower" is the inhabited part of Egypt, which is basically the Nile
It makes sense: outside of the Nile, Egypt is like the rest of the Sahara desert, an inhospitable hell for humans
Global warming is accelerating
There's only one thing we can do today to delay it before we burn, enough to solve the pbm: SO2 injection
Some ppl are squeamish about it but they shouldn't be. SO2 is so obviously the right solution that we should do it now. Here's why:
There is no way we can stop carbon emissions on time
The Earth is reaching 1.5ºC of warming, but carbon emissions are higher than ever, carried by emerging economies that won't stay poor just for the environment
Solar, wind, nuclear, batteries, electric vehicles... All of these will curb CO2 emissions soon, but not soon enough. They will take decades
And extracting CO2 from the atmosphere is very expensive: ~$100 per ton
This is the ghost of Poland's past
Poles call this type of map "widać zabory": "You can see the partitions"
What partitions?
Why is Poland like that today?
What does it tell us about the country?
About Russia? Germany?
Let's explore:
You might have seen this map already: It overlaps Poland's election results with the old German empire borders
So is that region different because of German influence and investment? That's only a tiny part of the story. This can be quite misleading!
Consider these other maps: They highlight not one internal border, but three—between the German, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian parts
Germany just became the 3rd largest economy
But why is it so rich?
Work ethic?
Here's a huge factor: Geography 🧵
If there was something special about 🇩🇪, we should be able to tell it in the regional GDP numbers: It should stand out. But no: regions of neighboring Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, England, and Northern Italy are as rich or richer
Why are Denmark and the Netherlands richer than Germany in terms of GDP per capita if Germany is so well run?
Why is Berlin the capital of Germany? It's much less straightforward than you might expect!
The story involves kings, emperors, imperial roads, rivers, seas, plains, trade, and a crucial 200 m hill
Here it is: thread
First, Berlin is not central. Most capitals try to be, but Berlin is in the northeastern corner of the country
Also, most European capitals are on the biggest regional river:
London➡️Thames
Paris➡️Seine
Rome➡️Tiber
Vienna/Budapest/Belgrade➡️Danube
Warsaw➡️Vistula
Kiev➡️Dnieper
Slower now, to give you time to capture the details:
I'm gearing up for a huge series on Germany, with this and much more: Why it's so rich, what are its main priorities, why it's so federal, what's special about each region...