Mike Arauz's Blog – The Archives

While tracking the spread of my own idea, Spectrum of Online Friendship, I discovered this quote in a comment left on the Tumblr blog of Jay Parkinson, co-founder of Hello Health.

The idea that we "live for the survival of our ideas" is a provocative thought. When we think about how we live in the digital world, I think there's a lot of truth to it.

(Whether or not these ideas are original, I think is beside the point. The more time I spend in the digital world, the more convinced I become that there's no such thing as an original thought.)

Think about the skills we hone in the digital world. When we think of individuals who have achieved great success in the digital world, "cewebrities," and particularly web-savvy people, what do they have in common? They all have developed a talent for using digital communications technology in order to spread ideas that are important to them.

We get good at building a network of like-minded people. We get good at cultivating relationships that help those people to feel invested in our work. We get good at designing ideas to take advantage of the social dynamics that inspire people to spread them. We get good at giving up control of our ideas so that they can be adapted, remixed, and re-purposed, by others.

This is what it takes to be successful in the digital space. And these are the skills that brands need to work on to achieve similar success.

Understand the Spectrum of Online Friendship. Understand Spreadable Media. Understand Recombinant Branding.