Last December, one of my ideas went viral. If you’ve ever been part of something going viral on the Web, what I’m about to describe will be familiar. You put an idea into the world. Whether in blog post, video or non-digital form. You release an idea. Unless you're designing it to be viral, it takes you by surprise that it catches on so quickly. You wake up the day after you’ve posted to discover, with a sharp intake of breath, it caught on.

I’m reminded of a bit of dialog from the trailer for The Social Network*

“The site got twenty-two hundred hits within two hours?” a woman asks, her voice conveys incredulity. “Thousand,” the lead character corrects, “twenty-two thousand.”

I don’t have experience with anything of my creation going viral to the extent captured in that scene. But consider what you'd have to do if it did. Here's what you'd have to do.

How Viral Impacts You

A picture of viral success.** Unless you've planned for it, overnight you have to build a support team. You can't run a viral campaign alone. You need to clear your schedule to focus on the viral message. Stoke the fire. Viral can overnight you a full-blown community, one to which you feel responsible. When my idea went viral last December I dropped everything to focus on it.

It’s against that backdrop that I present you the question a trusted advisor recently presented me. The conversation was about the social Web, and in particular how frustrated I found myself with it pre-sabbatical. I confided in her how I’ve noticed the social Web shift from a place of intimate sharing to a place of addiction where retweets and reblogs rule. Sharing is no longer sharing for the sake of sharing, I said. Sharing is done in the hopes that someday someone will do the same for us. We’ll help someone, some product or service, go viral today with the hope that they’ll help us reach our personal tipping point tomorrow.

How Viral Impacts Others: "It is a virus."

She asked, “have you ever really thought about that word. Viral? What if you’re giving someone something they don’t actually want? After all, it is a virus.” I paused to think about it. Then, out of nervousness, I said words like “opt-in” and “choice."

I left the conversation and sat with it. I thought about times I’ve sent a message to the thousands of people who have opted-in to my world, directing them to a place of sanctuary I’d discovered. A place where the comments sections were empty (before I trumpeted the horn).

I had seen that emptiness as needing to be filled. I wanted to, in my own way, cry First! Finding that undiscovered treasure and blasting it to several thousand people, I literally gave that blogger or video creator or artist a virus without their permission. I sent thousands of casual passersby (and a few active guests), to what amounts to their online living room.

Maybe the next morning they woke to find their blog traffic hit the ceiling. Or their comments section buckle under the stampede. Now, of course, as I told my adviser, if you put it on the Web, you have to expect someone might find it someday. But what about that careless aside you send out that has a ripple impact you never anticipated? I think of one one-hundred and forty character missive that nearly brought down a brand for its target audience, because someone within the target made an off-the-cuff remark.

"It is a possibility to live into"

Benjamin Zander expresses his belief that what we say matters with an illustration. At the end of this Ted Talk, he relates a story of a woman who saw her brother on a train to Auschwitz and thought only to scold him for not wearing shoes. That would be the last time she saw her brother. Zander then shares that this woman made a vow, saying, “I will never say anything that couldn’t stand as the last thing I ever say.” "Now, can we do that?” asks Zander, “No, and we’ll make ourselves wrong and others wrong, but it is a possibility to live into.” Remember our words (and bits) carry weight. Simply because they’re digital doesn’t make them carry less of an impact.

Perhaps our digital words are more likely to cause damage (even if they're less potent) because we can’t deliver them with this tone or that head tilt.

We have to pay attention to our words, our status updates, because words (regardless of the length of the statement, and whether delivered in person or digitally) matter. We must be vigilant because we have a responsibility - not just to those we're sure will hear what we say directly. We’re responsible to anyone who may experience the ripple.

(In short, everyone.)

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*Watch the Vega Choir cover Creep, the song you hear in the trailer (off Radiohead's 1993 Pablo Honey)

** I link to the Old Spice viral campaign because it's fresh. But there's debate about whether it was a success, even virally speaking. I return to questions: does viral mean success? Why the obsession with "going viral?" And after it has gone viral, what then?

Thank you Lisa Barone, Patrick Reynolds, Ed Schipul and Heidi Wilson for reading drafts of this.