Viral design: User concepts of virality on the niche social media site, dribbble

Virality is a much-studied topic on popular social media sites, but has been rarely explored on niche sites. Dribbble is a niche social networking site for artists and designers with over 600,000 users. Using a mixed-method approach, we explore virality from a user-centric perspective. Interviews confirm that viral-like events do exist on Dribbble. Through interviews we identify the measures and possible driving factors of viral-like events. While what spreads is different than on other platforms, our work suggests that the measures and mechanics that drive these events are similar. These similarities reflect fundamental human behavior underlying social phenomenon across different platforms. Our results are supported by regression modeling using variables identified by our informants. Smaller sites like Dribbble are rarely studied, so our work contributes to social media studies, particularly using mixed methods approaches, and to the body of research around information diffusion and viral events.