Marc Tuters

Over the course of this past year as a researcher at the Annenberg Center, I worked on a guide to viral marketing techniques for Todd Richmond as part of a Hewlett Foundation funded project around Open Content. Hewlett has supported a variety of open content initiatives, such as MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW), which have made significant progress in expanding and extending the reach of educational material into the open-source ecosystem. Hewlett was interested in new models for the organization and delivery of this "new public library" of free content. As such Todd's project, entitled Viral University Education (vue), sought to better understand and facilitate the uptake of open content by studying how viral marketing techniques might be applied to he dissemination of open content. To that end, I have compiled my research in the form of what Todd likes to call a "living book". The idea is to initiate a conversation around how viral media might be leveraged (or not) for the Open Education Resources movement. In over a dozen chapters illustrated with examples from across the spectrum of current media culture, the text explores such concepts as collective intelligence and fandom, consumer empowerment and conversational media and the psychology of viral marketing.