Fungal Marketing? Connecting Cordyceps to Dropbox

I coulda sworn I wrote about this video a while back, but it seems that I was mistaken.

Cordyceps is by far the coolest fungus genus I’ve ever seen. It’s also perhaps the most disgusting.

Some highlights from the video:

• Cordyceps is a genus of parasitic fungi that tend to infect insects; the spores of the fungus, once inhaled, take control of the infected insect’s mind
• The infected insect crawls up a branch to a prescribed height, and latches on to said branch with its teeth just before death
• The fungus then replaces the tissue inside the host, and eventually bursts through the insect’s exoskeleton
• The fruiting body of the fungus then distributes the spores onto the forest floor
• The Cordyceps genus contains thousands of species, each of which is designed to attack a single host species
• All of this is simultaneously awesome and disgusting

So…

Design for one particular host? I can dig that.

Design some thing that creates behavior change in the host, such that it is compelled to spread the…um…contagion in the most effective possible way? I’m still on board. Look at Farmville: as repulsive as it may be, the game is designed to reward people who share the most. For a happier case study of this kind of design, have a look at Dropbox, AKA my favorite web service EVER (sorry, Flickr).

Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned

In particular, check out slides 28-30. After a failed attempt to get users via search – and spending upwards of $200 per acquisition – they incentivized digital word-of-mouth by offering two-sided referral bonuses. If a new user shares a link to the Dropbox signup form, and their friends sign up via that form, BOTH players get extra storage. And Dropbox wins because it gets a new customer for the cost of (potentially) a couple gigs of storage space. Win.

And that’s that.

May I offer another post?

• March 7, 2010 — Microsoft Courier Interface: Awesome (2)
• May 26, 2009 — Ask Focus on Energy (7)
• August 21, 2008 — A night off (0)