In viral marketing, the K-factor can be used to describe the growth rate of websites, apps, or a customer base.
) measures the average number of people a host will contact while still infectious, and "infection" (
In their early days, Dropbox and WhatsApp boasted k-factors of 0.7 and 0.4, respectively, which were major contributors to their financial success.
[3] K-factor is limited to measuring how directly effective word-of-mouth or member invitation schemes are, but there are other ways for a user to come to a new app.
With the advent of social media, a new evolution to the K-factor concept has emerged.