When people mention “The New Media”, Web 2.0  or uniformly use the term Facebook or Twitter as an umbrella term (Sillies!), you often hear about stories, videos or other online material having gone “viral.” The WTF Viral factor (as described in this post over at We Love Viral) basically describes how content gets a lot of exponentially growing attention. Person A tell his mom B and a friend C that he saw F’s dad making out with D’s secretary in the company backlot person A did an internship at. As a result mom B tells its coffee round consisting of several other moms of person D, E and F, oh and of course G who brings all the yummy cup cakes, who then,… Okay, we figured out how rumors spread, same technique, different content…

This inevitably leads to the following question. How do you get people’s attention whose childhood taught them to keep their attention span shortened to a minimum and whose radar displays only peak when several people are shot slaughtered put into a microwave and set on defrost mode having them spin on the glass table in there? … I got your attention there. Point proven. Thank you.

WTF & OMG. Ingredients for home-made virally spreading content.

So to sum it up: To have things spread virally, be sure to easily connect people (coffee meet ups, Twitter, Facebook), create unique content that have as many people go “WTF” and this is where it starts getting viral “OMG I need to tell all my buddies”. Both conditions fulfilled, you will achieve a maximum of attraction and exposition. See this example. Cellphone being microwaved.

• “WTF?” Check.
• “OMG I need to show my friends!” Check.

Another example just to train yourself in how to have things go viral. The Swine Flu:

• “WTF? There’s a flu named after swines?” Check.
• “I may be infected. Should tell my friends I didn’t wash my hands?” Check.

Myassociationwith the attached picture explained as follows: “Ozapft is” is German dialect (Bavarian) for “es ist angezapft” meaning you just tapped a keg of beer. Phonetic pronunciation help should look like this: awww-ts-uh-pft-e-s. Thus this is the ultimate motto for the Oktoberfest (no need to explain that, right? I saw Oktoberfest Sausages at Costco)I figured this little bit of information qualifies for a schnelles (quick) Lingo Bingo and blends in with my sharing thoughts on the internet.

Information Hydrant · photo by Will Lion on flickr.com

Lean back and let the internet feed you with yummie content… Great concept, isn’t it? Just like a zoo personal feeding this little fella · photo byRaghuram

“Never compare apples and oranges”, we have been preached since we waved goodbye to kindergarten. I’m afraid that I am going to do exactly the opposite of what this old saying (en-de equivalents can be found here) implies. Now that we signed up on heaps of online services like Facebook, Google Reader, Digg, Del.icio.us, Twitter and Co, we are having troubles sharing that content with people from other platforms.

The web goes cross platform with content aggregators who suck content from specific sites and gather its content in one place resulting in one huge diverse feed.Find out about apples, oranges and aggregators after the jump.

Hey, excuse me for this twitter-ish quick post, but I wanted to put it out there: I have Socialthing! invites to give away. Comment on this post, use your correct email address in the email field in the comment form and I will send it right to you.

What is Socialthing? Well, it is a way to get your digital life together. It combines your online social networking content from flickr, digg, del.icio.us, Facebook, twitter and the list of services supported is growing. For now, it is invitation based, so be quick to get a glimpse.

Update: No more invites. Support given up. Socialthing as it is now won’t change until this “new thing” will be presented. 

It’ll stay live in its current version (no matter how broken it is) until we have a comparable product on the market (which is coming). We’re also going to stop allowing new accounts to be created (this also includes new invites and outstanding invites). We just simply can’t handle new folks coming in, especially when we fully admit a lot of the experience is already broken.

But with all that, we can’t wait till you can try out the new stuff that’s on the way!

Fake Steve Jobs gives quite an interesting view on the Web 2.0 bubble (at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco) that according to new Internet giants isn’t gonna burst – not this time – not again. This video is 25 minutes “you’ll never get back”, but is highly recommended. Witty sense of humor and good stories. I had to laugh out loud several times. More on the Web 2.0, after the jump.

There are certain signs that can tell you whether or not you’re in a healthy condition or relation to something you like in life. Signs suggesting that you need to get over the Web 2.0 addiction of yours, to stop taking your online life too seriously and to get a life are listed in joyoftech.com’s comic called Signs You May Need to Get A New Life. In case you feel like ticking all options and failed to find a Gmail-ish “Select All” button, it might already be too late, my dear friend. For you out there in desperate need of this button, I altruistically provide one. Take the test after the jump.

(+ Tutorial for Free Twitter Mac Client)

Shocking News: Twitter Is Not Invincible.

Twitter is one of these Web 2.0 services that has to struggle with a non-stop growing community and obviously has troubles keeping up the servers running the way they should. Tisk. Tisk.

It happened a lot lately. Twitter is down. That’s what she said. So what is there to do other than tweet tweet tweet all day?

Several people have approached me (I’ve been approached, lol) on one of the latest changes on my blog. As a passionate follower you couldn’t help but sense there was something new to PHIL’s Blogging, right? It’s that grey box, up there, giving you the latest updates (from twitter.com/phdotaschauer). Read why Twitter can improve your blog, connect you with people across the globe and how I embedded the Twitter box so smoothly.

Twitter is an online application that allows to display micro blog entries originally dealing with the important question in today’s society: What are you doing at this moment?