Virality
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The 7 Ways Dropbox Hacked Growth to Become a $4 Billion Company
Did you know Dropbox has spent very little on advertising , yet it is worth $4 billion? What have they done that’s made their business so successful? They’ve implemented many growth hacks that we’ll discuss in this article.
Decline Of Reader Apps Likely Due To News Feed Changes, Shows Facebook Controls The Traffic Faucet
No, Facebook news reader apps aren’t declining because users suddenly got fed up with auto-sharing.
The Seven Principles You Need to Know to Build a Great Social Product
Social products are an interesting bird. For even the most experienced product designer, social products prove an elusive lover. While there are many obvious truths in social products, there are also alot of ways to design them poorly. Especially when you are deep in the moment making pixel-level decisions trying to remember what’s important, things may not be so clear. The only magic I’ve found in designing compelling social products that have the best shot at breaking through the noise and capturing people’s time and money is in being extremely clear on how your social product meets a few key design principles.
Attended a dynamite workshop this week on Gamification, run by Gabe Zichermann . He’s written a book on it, is consulting for Google about it, and is doing a video and another book on the topic for O’Reilly , the well-regarded tech publishing house (responsible for my beloved Head First HTML/CSS book, highly recommended to anyone looking for a basic primer on website building blocks). The workshop was on game mechanics. Now, I am not a big video/computer game fan. When I first encountered this topic, it sounded pretty dry and irrelevant: “I’m not building a game,” I thought, “so I can’t see how this will be of much interest.”
Game Mechanics: Sounds dry, actually fascinating.
Lately, I've been putting together a list of things that make social apps viral, mainly looking at the startups that inspire me most in that area (social). So this is loosely gathered from looking at Hashable , PlanCast , Quora , Foursquare , LikeALittle and the likes. It's just a candid look at those - and others in the same space - startups to extract what might have been part of the essence of their viral growth. In other words : they all include some or all of the following points. What this list is : my thoughts on the (killer) ingredients that can make your startup viral if you have the first mandatory ingredient : an interesting concept . What this is list is not : a to do list if your startup is a social startup.
In search of the perfect viral social app - Laurent Kretz on Posterous
Viral Cycle Time
Another often overlooked viral loop concept is cycle time. That's the average time it takes to complete one loop, e.g. the cycle from sending out an invite to the person who was invited sending out an invite. In other words, Viral cycle time is the wavelength of viral loops. It's often overlooked (at least initially) because the focus is usually on just getting exponential. Cycle time is important because along with the k-factor , cycle time determines growth trajectory. You can be exponential, but still grow really really slowly.
Editor’s note : This guest post is written by Uzi Shmilovici, CEO and founder of Future Simple , the company behind Base — a simple CRM for small businesses
Eight Ways To Go Viral
If you want your start-up to become the next big thing, it’s not good enough to just build a great product.
9 Ways To Make Your Startup Grow Virally
How to Make Your Startup Go Viral The Pinterest Way
On Thanksgiving, Pinterest’s co-founder Ben Silbermann sent an email to his entire user base saying thanks. It was fitting, as Pinterest was born two years ago on Thanksgiving day 2009.
It’s important to know when the highest percentage of your audience is eavesdropping on your social networks—so that when you share content you’ll get maximum exposure. Use the following data to learn when your audience is most likely to tune in. Be sure to check in with us next week when we discuss timing & email marketing. Data courtesy of Dan Zarrella ( @danzarrella ) and HubSpot . Content available as a webinar by Dan Zarrella here . View an enlarged version of this Infographic »
The Science of Social Timing Part 1: Facebook and Twitter Social Networks