While this sounds like a cheap rip-off of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, it is in fact a case study of the power of an idea when coupled with the new Internet. I am not going to recap, but let the clever perpetrator, Oli Young, explain the premise here. And if you are really cool, the Facebook group is here.

While his explanation is entertaining, Young notes some valuable lessons learned. He believes the underlying truth is that viral marketing is hit or miss, yet his later discussion highlights just how you hit. Here is what I make of it.

#1 Don’t try too hard – People don’t react well to any presentation that is too smooth, too aggressive, or too good to be true.

#2 Do consider content – Here, try hard. As Young notes, content is still king. Complex concepts and elaborate themes based on good ideas will garner attention regardless. Again, this goes against aggressive marketing in lieu of better production.

#3 Don’t expect immediate results – Just like its biological counterparts, viral marketing progresses geometrically. That means the size reached tends to double regularly. On the bottom end, 10 to 40 viewers in 3 weeks may not seem like much, but if it is steady, that equals 20,480 in 3 months. (However, let’s not forget to be realistic about 41,943,040 in 6 months, however…just showing the general principle here.)

#4 Do expect a community to form – People rally around ideas…even bad ones, but especially good ones. They become engaged in them. This should always be kept in mind with dealing with participants.

#5 Don’t rely on traditional media to explain it – So far the Fourth Estate doesn’t quite understand the fluidity and malleability of the new Internet. They still accept too much at face value. Young only had a few journalists talk to him, let alone ask him if it was a scam. Instead, most of them just accepted it at face value. Most users did not. So it really makes a good argument for individual judgment.

Overall, it is a very insightful, successful, and juvenile experiment in the wonders of Web 2.0. The only negative I see is that there isn’t some lucky lad out there named SpiderPig Sparkhall Young.