- Agha Ali Raza, Rajat Kulshreshtha, Spandana Gella, S. Blagsvedt, Maya Chandrasekaran, B. Raj, R. Rosenfeld. 2016. Viral Spread via Entertainment and Voice-Messaging Among Telephone Users in India. Abstract: We explore how development-related, voice-based, information services could organically spread among low-literate masses in the developing world. We report lessons learned from a remote deployment of "Polly" in India (from the US) to spread job-related information. Polly is an entertainment driven, voice-based service, available over simple phones that is aimed at familiarizing people with speech interfaces and mass-dissemination of development related information to low-literate users. In 2012, Polly had become viral in Pakistan and successfully spread recorded newspaper job ads to thousands of mobile phone users. Remotely deployed in India, Polly did not take off immediately as it did in Pakistan. Instead, it initially entered a six-month long phase of fluctuating, intermittent activity. We experimented with various forms of seeding and it eventually transitioned into a viral phase, with sustained transmission that continued for five months but without (exponential) growth. Finally, interface adjustments in response to user feedback enabling plain-voice asynchronous voice-messaging resulted in an abrupt exponential and viral growth amassing 10,349 phone calls by 1,613 users over a span of seven days. Of these, 299 users also transitioned to the job service. User feedback and surveys suggest possible reasons for each phase. We study the challenges of remote deployment and the interplay of user interface; language of the system; seeding mechanisms and active response to user feedback towards the uptake of the service. We also report a detailed comparison of viral spread in the two countries.
