Whatsapp grew because it positioned itself as a BBM for All Phones. It was free on its biggest platform (in terms of having to attack) BlackBerry which encourag

Whatsapp grew because it positioned itself as a BBM for All Phones. It was free on its biggest platform (in terms of having to attack) BlackBerry which encouraged people to tell their friends on the iPhone to get it - which they did, and they held promotions giving it away, something they still do. It still is the greatest platform to cross-text, in my opinion (I actually had it initially free on BlackBerry and have since paid for it on the iPhone). For your initial users you want your friends & family to use it ideally and then encourage them and the users they acquire to import their “graphs” to it & then contacting them to join your service. If you can’t get your friends or family to use the service – go to a local university etc and hand out flyers (if you don’t want to do that, post a job listing on the universities website and get a student to hand them out) Once you’ve done that, ask the local universities when the next “fair” is for freshers and attend it with your ‘service’ giving out flyers, having a stall there etc and acquiring users.