AUBSpring12-MCOM251

Viral dissemination has been a feature of the internet almost from the beginning, but the deliberate exploitation of it dates from Independence Day in the US in 1996, when Hotmail was launched by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith. It was the first "webmail" system (allowing people to send and receive email using an internet browser) and its makers had the brilliant idea of appending a footer to every message sent stating that it had been sent by Hotmail and inviting the recipient to "get a free Hotmail account" at www.hotmail.com.Viral dissemination received a really powerful boost with the launch of YouTube in 2005. Thereafter, people were able to post striking, amusing or daft videos online and the service made it easy to "share" anything that viewers liked. This is what led to the LOLcat explosion and the astonishing viewing totals for charming videos like Charlie Bit My Finger, which has been watched more than 12 million times since it first appeared in 2007.Viral dissemination was also responsible for making Bruno Ganz, the actor who played Adolf Hitler in Downfall, the 2004 film about the last days of Hitler, into the most famous German actor in the world – though in this case the makers of the film came to regard its online notoriety as a mixed blessing as parodies of one of its climactic scenes started to spread virally across the network.