Viral-Driven Development, even though sounds similar, is quite different than Virality-Driven Development. And when we said about VDD, it’s the latter one.
We have to write about this in the midst of latest, trending Internet products which just made everything in this world better and worse. Whether it’s Shopee with its infamous ads and promotions (e.g. get a $0.99 discount if you’ve purchased $499 here), TikTok, other shady TikTok clones (like the infamous Shopee Video) and so.
But to make things clear, Viral-Driven products are those who are built upon existing trends. But Virality-Driven products are those who are built with intentions to make everything viral and trending, and practically TikTok is one of them. Both kinds of products are highly exploitable, and that’s why people
To give some examples of Viral-Driven ones, let’s start with Linktree. Linktree was not intentionally meant to be viral, instead it tries to solve what’s hiddenly infamous and popular on Instagram: the inability to attach (more than one) links under the same account. But the rest of the competitors, like Beacons and Desty and Koji and so on, they are instead Virality-Driven. They already know that Linktree will become a hit in the Instagram space, so they hoped the same kind of fortune by creating clones of Linktree.
Gojek is another Viral-Driven product, where they saw opportunities by marrying between three viral things: Jakarta’s traffic, (infamous) motorcycle taxi convenience, and specifically those pre-9 and after-5 commuting traffic.
Sure, mature competitors like Grab finally compete with them, but remember that during the early years of Gojek, they faced (and eventually won) the competition from smaller, Virality-Driven apps and companies: BlueJek, CyberJek, LadyJek, and others.
Sometimes, Virality-Driven product development are not always done by cheap competitors of popular services. And TikTok is just a clear example. TikTok Shop? What!? At a glance they might want to compete with Facebook Marketplace which has become popular in several niches of users. TikTok for Business!?!? What the heck? Now you expect businesses to walk along the same viral path from your Musical.ly days?
One of the most non-sensible things TikTok have launched, as a Virality-Driven company, is TikTok Food. Yes, an official food store that sells dishes and snacks as viral on TikTok.
Sure, there are still many virality-driven example out there. We’re watching you, Shopee. But I think that’s for another story.
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