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They won't search you out. You need to go out and grab their attention. What is your project?

by nudge 16y ago

megamark16 16y ago
Yeah, that's what I've come to realize. So how did everyone find their most passionate users? Were they people that you already knew? Friends and family? Made up? I remember the reddit guys saying once in an interview that they had a bunch of fake accounts that they used to post stories to reddit with all day long to keep the activity going and give the appearance of a lot of users. My project is http://AppRabbit.com http://AppRabbit.com, a database web app builder.
- nudge 16y ago
  I did not know that about reddit! I had wondered how sites which depend on so much user participation get started. Now I know they cheat ;) Anyway maybe you need to define more clearly what you want? What is a 'passionate' user? Your app doesn't appear to be social, so you don't need to create the illusion of popularity on-site, like reddit. Do you want evangelists, people going out and blogging about how great your app is? I don't really know how to bring that about. Just make the best damn thing you can and then politely inform bloggers you read about it. If you look at the balsamiq (a mockup program) website there is a post on how the guy approached bloggers at the start. I quite like the Steve Martin approach: "be so good they can't ignore you". Naively, I kind of think that if you make something great, that really solves a problem for people, they will want to share that with others. So... I guess the answer is for you to very clearly define who you are helping, what problem you are helping them solve, and then approach them. By way of friendly criticism, your site could probably do with a better front page, in terms of a very quick explanation of what it is and why a reader might care. Some good examples: http://rethinkdb.com/ http://rethinkdb.com/ http://basecamphq.com/ http://basecamphq.com/ One question for you to think about (in general, but especially for the front page) would be who would need to implement a database but would not want or be able to do it themselves.

They won't search you out. You need to go out and grab their attention. What is your project?

by nudge 16y ago

They won't search you out. You need to go out and grab their attention. What is your project?

Yeah, that's what I've come to realize. So how did everyone find their most passionate users? Were they people that you already knew? Friends and family? Made up? I remember the reddit guys saying once in an interview that they had a bunch of fake accounts that they used to post stories to reddit with all day long to keep the activity going and give the appearance of a lot of users. My project is http://AppRabbit.com http://AppRabbit.com, a database web app builder.

nudge 16y ago
I did not know that about reddit! I had wondered how sites which depend on so much user participation get started. Now I know they cheat ;) Anyway maybe you need to define more clearly what you want? What is a 'passionate' user? Your app doesn't appear to be social, so you don't need to create the illusion of popularity on-site, like reddit. Do you want evangelists, people going out and blogging about how great your app is? I don't really know how to bring that about. Just make the best damn thing you can and then politely inform bloggers you read about it. If you look at the balsamiq (a mockup program) website there is a post on how the guy approached bloggers at the start. I quite like the Steve Martin approach: "be so good they can't ignore you". Naively, I kind of think that if you make something great, that really solves a problem for people, they will want to share that with others. So... I guess the answer is for you to very clearly define who you are helping, what problem you are helping them solve, and then approach them. By way of friendly criticism, your site could probably do with a better front page, in terms of a very quick explanation of what it is and why a reader might care. Some good examples: http://rethinkdb.com/ http://rethinkdb.com/ http://basecamphq.com/ http://basecamphq.com/ One question for you to think about (in general, but especially for the front page) would be who would need to implement a database but would not want or be able to do it themselves.