Mavericks of the webosphere

Creating a viral presence, on the Web or offline, often means relaxing standards of 'ownership'. Buzz can sometimes be most easily generated by creating something of real, pragmatic worth and then releasing it with very little in terms of rules and regulations on how it may be used, altered or described. Alex Frankel brings up an instructive example in his recent book, Word Craft. The word 'maverick' derives from a 19th century Texan, Samuel Maverick, who sold a parcel of land and received 1,200 head of cattle as payment; for whatever reason, lost to history, he did not brand them but let them roam free all over the region. Depending on the storyteller, Samuel Maverick was either the largest cattle owner in Texas (since he could theoretically claim any unmarked cattle as his own by default) or the most incompetent businessman to ever enter the livestock trade. This is an extreme example, but whatever Samuel Maverick might have lost in cash, he certainly made up for in 'buzz'. There were many Texas cattlemen richer, but none other so far as I know whose names are now in the dictionary. Take this slightly fuzzy concept and apply it to a modern opensource idea like Linux, the freerange OS. Linus Torvalds may not be outlandishly rich for giving Linux away for free, but the Linux code has grown organically through a kind of viral buzz into a real threat to Microsoft Windows. But what about marketing? I always like to use extreme examples like Samuel Maverick and his free beef and then see what can be taken away from that into the 'real world'. In terms of 'viral marketing', the compromise is to RELAX the legal ties that keep products and ideas fettered and insular but find some way to retain a way to make a profit. Giving away free tools like the PC-based alarm clock I pointed out in a previous post is one good solution-all that is needed is an unobtrusive, no-pressure banner ad/text link that gets passed along with it. I think that as the marketplace becomes more and more saturated, the best marketers will increasingly be the ones who figure out how to give things away for free and make their money indirectly by 'planting a seed' and sewing it widely. "Viral marketing" could just as easily be called "seed marketing": just as many plants propagate by enticing insects or birds to either carry their pollen or eat their seeds and drop them somewhere else, products or ideas can spread like wildfire if they get picked up and passed around rather than sitting in locked glass cases.
For anyone interested in marketing in general, language or both, I strongly recommend Alex Frankel's Word Craft-check out Frankel's web page.