A blog post from makeuseof.com ran up digg yesterday and got me wondering about all the lists we create. You see them posted all the time: ”My list of favorite X.” This one is pretty typical: 40 Unusual Websites You Should Bookmark.

What compels someone to construct a list like that? Considering the many companies and services mentioned, I’m hopeful makeuseof.com has not become a PR shill. So why? And why would those 40 make this list? Call it coincidence, but Seth Godin wrote a short post yesterday that hits on the topic. Is makeuseof.com an Official Influencer? Were they targeted by marketers? Likely not. With the barrage of Web applications that seem to pour onto the Internet every day, one magical thing still makes them boom or not…and it’s called “do I give a crap about what it does?” As Seth wrote:

…the most effective technique [for viral campaigns] is making stuff worth talking about in the first place. True viral marketing happens not when the marketer plans for it or targets bloggers or skateboarders or pirates with goatees, but when the item/service/event is worth talking about.

Customers, users, visitors, chumps. Call us what you will, but it’s we humans that matter, not what the application does. Make a product worth using, worth talking about, and you just may be on to something. You can try all day to make it viral, to be on as many lists as you can worm your way onto, but if Your Thing does nothing I need, ciao, baby.

It looks like the major networks have bought in to the web video phenomenon, at least until the next ratings book comes out. Witness the new ABC show i-CAUGHT, which I did in fact catch the other night. The concept is to highlight what is most popular on the web. We’ll see how long it takes for the network to make money from these clip-sharing folks (or maybe they already are).

I’m interested to see if this marriage between Internet video and broadcast TV will last. It looks like it has potential. One of the more interesting viral segments asks people to submit videos for inclusion in the show. The concept is to put in three words how your week has gone. The first round got my attention.

I enjoyed this idea so much I had to submit my own. Here’s hoping I make the cut next week!

Ah, the free sample—staple of bakeries and food courts everywhere. “Hey buddy, check out this ginger chicken on a toothpick!”

That’s confidence, right? This stuff is so good you just taste it and you’ll want to buy it.

You know what I love about the food court sample? It’s always there. Sometimes on a busy day I just walk back and forth grabbing toothpick after toothpick. Score!

Think they notice it’s me over and over? Think they care? Listen, the chicken is cooked anyway, someone’s got to eat it.

When the day comes that I’m hungry enough, I’ll buy a meal. In the meantime I tell hungry friends to go eat there—ooh, did someone say viral marketing?

And now is when I compare ginger chicken to Web applications.

I just finished an online whiteboard collaboration with my team that works 80 miles away from me, and it was fantastic. “Oh, WebEx,” you say. “Maybe MS LiveMeeting or Adobe Connect.” Nope. Check out vYew, a FREE online collaboration and conferencing tool. It rocks.

Their model is much like the ginger-chicken-on-a-toothpick model (as taught at Wharton). After a simple registration, I get a taste of the chicken, not the whole bird. But I can return again and again whenever I need it. No trial expiration, no watermarked examples.

Much like the generous folks at 37 Signals, which offers up free online tools like Campfire (group chat) and Basecamp (project management), vYew is giving away their product to folks who need just a little bit. Currently, I may only need to use this online collaboration tool a few times a year, but now that the sample hooked me, it means two things:

1. If I need more (more pages, file uploads, etc.) I will become a paying customer to them as opposed to one of the other players
2. I’m telling other people (you) about them

Great product. Great model.