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It's worth noting that Kevin himself didn't use these tricks to go from "one to one million", and already had many fans and lots of momentum by the time Digg wa
by Maciek416 17y ago
It's worth noting that Kevin himself didn't use these tricks to go from "one to one million", and already had many fans and lots of momentum by the time Digg was launched. He was already a celebrity of sorts and even used his later appearances on the Screensavers show to plug Digg.
- bastian 17y agoIt is interesting that not many people talk about this personal brand or reputation building when it comes to successful Entrepreneurs.
- chriskelley 17y agoGary Vaynerchuck has been trying to get that in the heads of anyone that will listen for the last few years.
- bastian 17y agoThis is a very good and interesting point. While a mediocre product might not necessarily become a success just because it was launched by a person with a strong personal brand, it might however give that person the advantage of better and more initial visibility, which might result in more feedback. A good Entrepreneur (regardless of a strong personal brand), is then able to listen and adjust to the true market needs.
- chriskelley 17y agoWell put. Gary V has 852,497 followers on Twitter - any time he launches a new product/book/cruise, whatever, that's an immediate 852,497 pairs of eyeballs on his product. Now that's a great head start.
- bastian 17y agoI just realized that we both created our profile 573 days ago :)
- chriskelley 17y agoNice - do you know Alex Housley? I've done a little bit of work with him and the Rummble.tv folks.
- bastian 17y agoYes, i know Alex and Andrew, they are both good friends. You did the new Rummble intro right? Amazing work!
- chriskelley 17y agoYes I did - thanks! I actually did the package for FOWA London 09 as well, which can be partially seen in the Kevin Rose vid. http://vimeo.com/album/132400 http://vimeo.com/album/132400
- sachinag 17y agoHonestly, this makes no sense. It doesn't matter how famous you are - if your product sucks, people won't use it. Look at Ashton Kutcher's Blah Girls. It's a miserable failure - even though he's much, much, much more famous than a mere Kevin Rose - because no one really needed to see cartoon girls do a weak TMZ imitation. I think people like to chalk up Digg's success to Kevin's "celebrity", where in reality, he's a nobody and Digg actually is a really, really good product for the niche it's serving.
- bastian 17y agoI think one not necessarily has to do with the other. In this example Kevin simply used his existing network for the launch of Digg. I agree with you that Digg is a great product for the niche it is serving. That's why it is successful. Pownce on the other hand wasn't a good product and had limited success despite Kevin's efforts to push it.
- mikeryan 17y agoI actually thought Pownce was an interesting product I'm actually kind of surprised it never took off, except it was too "Twitter-like" so it never got the network it needed to gain critical mass.
- teej 17y agoPownce's failure had very little to do with it being "Twitter-like". It failed because it didn't solve a problem that real people had. Launching a product that is similar to popular incumbents isn't a negative feature. In many cases, it can help your unique selling point. Mint: Quicken but online and great UI. Hacker News: Digg for startups. Digg: Slashdot by the people.
- RyanMcGreal 17y ago>Pownce's failure had very little to do with it being "Twitter-like". It failed because it didn't solve a problem that real people had. What problem does Twitter solve? (Not a rhetorical question)