5 ms·

Do people have thoughts or pointers for building something users love when your product depends on there being enough users using the product? Dating apps, plat

Do people have thoughts or pointers for building something users love when your product depends on there being enough users using the product? Dating apps, platforms and such. When a single user gets no utility from your product if there aren't enough already using it, what does one do? You kind of have to spend some money marketing to get the initial word out. This is something I've been struggling with. We've been doing a lot of writing content and there's some word of mouth happening. We spend small amounts on FB too. But we're seeing a lot of users drop off with the reason "there just aren't enough other people using this".

jgh 10y ago
Didn't Tinder start off by seeding your experience with friends of friends on facebook?
- blizkreeg 10y ago
  I believe Tinder did a lot of going to campuses and throwing parties, that sort of thing.
kromem 10y ago
Foursquare solved the issue with gamification (badges). For your dating app example, you could add a non-geographically bounded ranking feature, similar to "hot or not." Basically, creating any sense of accomplishment within the platform will make it more difficult for people to abandon, giving you time to reach a scale where the core product value can be realized.
melvinmt 10y ago
You should look into improving your Single User Utility. Here are some links to get started: http://avc.com/2012/12/single-user-utility-in-a-social-system/ http://avc.com/2012/12/single-user-utility-in-a-social-syste... http://andrewchen.co/social-products-win-with-utility-not-invites-guest-post/ http://andrewchen.co/social-products-win-with-utility-not-in... http://platformed.info/seeding-platform-standalone-square-opentable-delicious/ http://platformed.info/seeding-platform-standalone-square-op... There are also countless examples of successful two-sided marketplaces who started out by "nurturing" (aka faking) one side of the market until they reached their critical mass.
qwrusz 10y ago
Hard to give pointers without more details of what the product is. There's all kinds of strategies, like starting hyper local (Facebook started just on Harvard's campus) or other startups have used waiting lists before launching to get a minimum threshold of users before opening the experience. Be careful of "there just aren't enough other people using this" as it directly relates to Sama's advice. Again it depends on the type of product you are building, but when there's a product users love or see they will love even more if there were more users, they don't drop it so easily rather they go out and recruit more users. What could you change to get these users to love the product so much they instead help it grow and recruit other users instead of just dropping it? I don't mean give them $20 (though you can) I mean how could you make the product so great they want to tell others to use it too?
duncanawoods 10y ago
1) New every time - I don't think there can ever by a free and repeatable way to do it because its so valuable that any method that gets discovered quickly gets saturated or gated to extract a % of the value 2) Bootstrap - grow from a small X that generates value for individuals/small-groups and slowly mutate into a Y that delivers value primarily from the network as your user-base grows. 3) High cost blanket advertising or PR - get an inrush of like minded people at the same time. I can't actually think of a success story that achieved this, plenty of failures though. 4) Better than 3) is to use capital to buy users and user activity such that the value stays in the network e.g. paypal giving away free $$ to every sign-up that they then paid to a paypal merchant.

jgh 10y ago

Didn't Tinder start off by seeding your experience with friends of friends on facebook?

blizkreeg 10y ago
I believe Tinder did a lot of going to campuses and throwing parties, that sort of thing.

kromem 10y ago

Foursquare solved the issue with gamification (badges). For your dating app example, you could add a non-geographically bounded ranking feature, similar to "hot or not." Basically, creating any sense of accomplishment within the platform will make it more difficult for people to abandon, giving you time to reach a scale where the core product value can be realized.

melvinmt 10y ago

You should look into improving your Single User Utility. Here are some links to get started: http://avc.com/2012/12/single-user-utility-in-a-social-system/ http://avc.com/2012/12/single-user-utility-in-a-social-syste... http://andrewchen.co/social-products-win-with-utility-not-invites-guest-post/ http://andrewchen.co/social-products-win-with-utility-not-in... http://platformed.info/seeding-platform-standalone-square-opentable-delicious/ http://platformed.info/seeding-platform-standalone-square-op... There are also countless examples of successful two-sided marketplaces who started out by "nurturing" (aka faking) one side of the market until they reached their critical mass.

qwrusz 10y ago

Hard to give pointers without more details of what the product is. There's all kinds of strategies, like starting hyper local (Facebook started just on Harvard's campus) or other startups have used waiting lists before launching to get a minimum threshold of users before opening the experience. Be careful of "there just aren't enough other people using this" as it directly relates to Sama's advice. Again it depends on the type of product you are building, but when there's a product users love or see they will love even more if there were more users, they don't drop it so easily rather they go out and recruit more users. What could you change to get these users to love the product so much they instead help it grow and recruit other users instead of just dropping it? I don't mean give them $20 (though you can) I mean how could you make the product so great they want to tell others to use it too?

duncanawoods 10y ago

1) New every time - I don't think there can ever by a free and repeatable way to do it because its so valuable that any method that gets discovered quickly gets saturated or gated to extract a % of the value 2) Bootstrap - grow from a small X that generates value for individuals/small-groups and slowly mutate into a Y that delivers value primarily from the network as your user-base grows. 3) High cost blanket advertising or PR - get an inrush of like minded people at the same time. I can't actually think of a success story that achieved this, plenty of failures though. 4) Better than 3) is to use capital to buy users and user activity such that the value stays in the network e.g. paypal giving away free $$ to every sign-up that they then paid to a paypal merchant.