Viral phenomena are objects or phenomena able to reproduce themselves or convert other objects into copies of themself when other objects are exposed to it.

The concept of something, other than a biological virus being viral came into vogue just after the Internet became widely popular in the mid to late 1990's. An object, even a non-material object, is considered to be viral when it has the ability to spread copies of itself or change other similar objects to become more like itself when those objects are simply exposed to the viral object. While the concept definitely, and originally) applies to biological viruses it is more commonly used to describe mostly how thoughts, information and trends move though and into a human population.

Examples of this phenomena include

• Memes (see Memes#Examples_of_memes ) Memes are possibly the most extreme example of a viral object.
• viral marketing
• Clothing Fashion trends
• viral email
• viral recommendations
• Blogging

An example of an object which has been accused of being viral, but which is not is the GNU General Public License (GPL). see GNU_General_Public_License#The_GPL_is_a_license for a rundown on the actual properties of the GPL.

See Also

• Meme
• Computer virus
• Virus
• Viral marketing

External Links

GNU General Public License (http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-license.php) A viral recommendation system (http://www.yelp.com/) Rankings of current viral emails, warning: possible adult content (http://viral.lycos.co.uk/vroot/3171/index.html)