People, given the ability to connect to one another, will connect to each other. That's been the power driving the Internet (and all communications technologies) since the beginning.

There's been plenty written about "viral marketing," but finding viral success has been elusive. There's also been a lot of talk about building word of mouth, but that can be pretty tough, too.

Three rules are clear:

* Information must be of value to more than one person; the virulence of the information increases proportionally with the number of people who find it valuable.

* Information must be timely.

* Information must be easily portable and transmittable.