There are definitely examples of “viral” content that maybe never really goes viral, but still delivers steady and dependable traffic. I’ve also seen examples of articles getting “Digged” 1 year after it was originally written.

@Ryan:

I think this quick fix is from management mantras of “long hanging fruit” and the need for “immediate return” - some that does not necessarily happen when it comes to building a genuine word-of-mouth viral campaign.

This makes me totally agree with the forest fire metaphor as being more accurate. In the petrie dish that is Facebook virality is great, but forest fires works more accurately in describing the Internet and its vast number of connections.

Also, I like how you define A listers and Word of Mouth. The problem is that the technology we have, like twitter, allows folks to prima facie conflate the two. For example, a total nobody can create the appearance that his word of mouth network is Michael Arrington, Om Malik, Dave McClure, Jeremiah Owyang because these folks aren’t always careful about who they friend.