This time of year, the word 'viral' stands for a nasty bug that causes us to cough up stuff even dear old Mom would turn her head away from.

However, two of the net's viral stars are taking center stage this week: one in a constant effort to stay ahead of the freshness curve while the other is looking to generate a few hundred million dollars. 

The first entry comes from comedian Dane Cook, who launched a reloaded version of his site earlier this week. If you stay plugged in with popular culture, you know Cook from his unique version of comedy and the MySpace phenomenon he helped start, gathering over 2 million 'friends' to help push out his message. If you're not a pop culture geek like me, you likely know D.C. from his movies (which aren't really that funny, unfortunately) or his face that has been spread over about 250,000 magazines the past 18 months.

Cook's story has been well-documented as to how he grew his fanbase. He decided early on to make more of an attempt to connect via the internet, flooding $25,000 into his first site and using social media to an extreme that would make highly-paid marketers blush. He was relentless and actually genuine about his connection with fans, a move that would pay off big time.

Soon after his second comedy album, Retaliation, become one of the biggest selling CD's in the country, a lot of people like myself were asking who this guy was and gave him a listen. A few years later, he's put out multi-platinum cd's, done a few comedy specials, a sellout tour and a few movies, all while having trysts with Jessica Simpson and other Hollyweird starlets. In short, it worked. He is now a very rich man and shows no signs of stopping. His new site is what he calls 'living' in terms of him being able to update content 24 hours a day, no matter what. To me, it's refreshing to see a star take a step toward his audience when he gets big rather than take a step away.

Love him or hate him, Cook used the online industry to its fullest and now, is a multi-millionaire.

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Hollywood is always looking to catch onto the next big fad, sometimes with pretty terrible results. While the entertainment industry as a whole has been really strong with using online media to promote their products, director J.J. Abrams of Lost/new Star Trek movie fame went a step further with this weekend's big movie release, Cloverfield. 

The studios haven't spent a ton of marketing money on Cloverfield as Abrams helped build intrigue with the most basic of viral marketing: buzz. He started a buzz around the movie's name (rumors had Cloverfield as a working title and had fanboys speculating it was a new Godzilla flick), a less-is-more trailer that aired to the perfect audience before last summer's smash Transformers, DaVinci Code style-online clues and Slusho, a fake Japanese drink maker that many thought was tied into the movie. Yes, the word 'Slusho' was enought to get the 'net talking. They became 'sneezers' to steal a term from Seth Godin.

As a result, Cloverfield has become a must-see flick that opens tonight with no major stars other than a giant creature who none of us have officially seen, save for some leaked sketches out on the 'net. Since it's Abrams - a master of the 'What could it be' storytelling camp - you know this is going to be good.

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Finally, there are some IBM ads I like and others which I can't stand. As someone in the tech biz, I get them but I get the feeling that as they're airing during NFL games, a good portion of the audience is like, "What? Huh?"

However, even the simplest of marketers should appreciate this one. For some reason, the non-English version is the only one out on the web. Go figure!