Publicity jolt is only meaningfully useful for companies whose per-user value growth with userbase, such as social networks. For all other products it's a flash

Publicity jolt is only meaningfully useful for companies whose per-user value growth with userbase, such as social networks. For all other products it's a flash in the pan. You don't provide specifics, so let's just talk about a stereotypical subscription-model business. Each user generates you on average $1/mo in revenue. Each month 1% of users abandon your service and leave. Each month you bring in 100 new users through your marketing efforts. Once you reach 10,000 users, the inflow and outflow will equate, your user base will stop changing. If you lose too many users to some freak accident, say, going down to 8000 users, your natural outflow will shrink to 80/mo and you will gain 100-80 = 20 net new users that month. Similarly, if a publicity jolt brings you extra 2000 users, your outflow will increase to 100-120 = - 20 net new users, and you will keep bleeding them for a few month. The system will naturally stabilize around 10k users. Hence there is a "natural size" for most such businesses. Now if you can increase your monthly inflow from 100 to 200 users by being mentioned on Lifehacker every single week, your "natural size" doubles to 20k. But a single mention won't do you a whole lot of good. The story is different for social network - the more people are there, the more people are likely to join. The key difference is that the inflow is a factor of the user base size, not of your own marketing effort.