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> 6000 registered users in a couple of days is hardly going viral Going viral isn't a certain number or speed of adoption. It's a method of adoption. If most o

> 6000 registered users in a couple of days is hardly going viral Going viral isn't a certain number or speed of adoption. It's a method of adoption. If most of these members joined because of referral by other friends, and they in turn are continuing to invite others, then yes, it's going viral.

deleted 12y ago
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personZ 12y ago
Nothing has demonstrated that it's referrals by friends -- it saw a small amount of attention on HN, and from that the inevitable reposts on Reddit. Further if the definition were so limited, then we could say that everything has "gone viral", making the phrase meaningless -- instead there is some level of scale necessary, which I don't think this level of success meets. HN is a finicky, short-attention span beast, by design. A front page of HN, and tens of thousands of uniques, often yields zero residual "value" (seriously, zero. The most lauded piece on here with endless upvotes and you're lucky if a single reader reposts it anywhere else or mentions it, beyond the karma seekers who stick it on /r/programming). I don't get this post. 6000 unique visitors in no universe yields thousands of emails (again, due to the short attention span probably 5000 clicked back ten seconds in), unless the game itself generates enormous amounts of operator notifications and mechanical turk type behavior, in which case the game is unsustainable for anyone. The model of getting a project to some level of success and then offloading it is an entirely reasonable one (though really the tough luck story I think undermines the pitch), though at the current level of success this project is, sadly, currently close to worthless. Having a very temporary spike of a niche user base is not at all sustainable.
zak_mc_kracken 12y ago
> Going viral isn't a certain number or speed of adoption. Going viral is certainly speed of adoption. By definition. It's not an absolute number, it's a growth pattern over time. Two days is not enough to decide that something went viral. 6,000 registered users is a very low number, even if it happens within a few hours: a simple exposure on the front page of HN or Reddit, or even better, being featured on Google Play or the iTunes store, will result in user sign ups in the order of the 100k's.

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personZ 12y ago

Nothing has demonstrated that it's referrals by friends -- it saw a small amount of attention on HN, and from that the inevitable reposts on Reddit. Further if the definition were so limited, then we could say that everything has "gone viral", making the phrase meaningless -- instead there is some level of scale necessary, which I don't think this level of success meets. HN is a finicky, short-attention span beast, by design. A front page of HN, and tens of thousands of uniques, often yields zero residual "value" (seriously, zero. The most lauded piece on here with endless upvotes and you're lucky if a single reader reposts it anywhere else or mentions it, beyond the karma seekers who stick it on /r/programming). I don't get this post. 6000 unique visitors in no universe yields thousands of emails (again, due to the short attention span probably 5000 clicked back ten seconds in), unless the game itself generates enormous amounts of operator notifications and mechanical turk type behavior, in which case the game is unsustainable for anyone. The model of getting a project to some level of success and then offloading it is an entirely reasonable one (though really the tough luck story I think undermines the pitch), though at the current level of success this project is, sadly, currently close to worthless. Having a very temporary spike of a niche user base is not at all sustainable.

zak_mc_kracken 12y ago

> Going viral isn't a certain number or speed of adoption. Going viral is certainly speed of adoption. By definition. It's not an absolute number, it's a growth pattern over time. Two days is not enough to decide that something went viral. 6,000 registered users is a very low number, even if it happens within a few hours: a simple exposure on the front page of HN or Reddit, or even better, being featured on Google Play or the iTunes store, will result in user sign ups in the order of the 100k's.