If I were starting out now (in startup land), I would clone threewords.me (gabrielweinberg.com) |
If I were starting out now (in startup land), I would clone threewords.me (gabrielweinberg.com) |
Bottom-line is that you can predict what would go viral as much as you can predict what would be fashionable. Not that much.
When threewords went viral, you were using a single linode, and seemed to solve your scaling problems by just upgrading to a larger node and implementing a bit of caching. What have you learned and what would you do differently this time?
If a viral project takes off and a month later 95% of your traffic has died off, but you find yourself with 10 million email addresses (signups), is it ethical or even legal to promote a completely unrelated project by emailing everyone?
I'm sure you could word it in a way that doesn't seem too spammy ("Thanks for checking out xxxx, try our new project: yyyyy").
I'm in this situation.. I've held off so far, as tempting as it is, because I hate spam myself..
"The Makeee network includes OriginalProject.com and the all new NewProject.com (has to be seen to be believed!)."
Or:
"PS. If you've got time, please check out my latest project - I'd really appreciate your feedback."
Or, perhaps a little spammy, do a joint mail-out for two projects in one newsletter?
When you get a new project ready; say something along the lines of "This will be the last email from viral-project.
The viral-project closing down, thanks for participating! (Allow option for people to get messages/pm/etc if it's a permanent shut down).
I will be focusing my efforts on a new direction: new-project."
Second, you'll learn a ton by working with millions of users. This is predicated on the huge assumption that your viral platform attracts millions of users, and that a large number of these (assuming every new internet entrepreneur is doing one...) are sustainable.
Third, it will pay off. Mark's pay-off, I'm sure, was more than he initially envisioned. That amount, to my knowledge, however, remains undisclosed. I don't believe enough evidence exists to assure such a payoff and create such confidence.
Fourth, you can use the user base to launch another startup. Sure, 1% of ~10M users is cool. But that, again, rests on the assumption that you can build up that base of 10M users.
I realize that this formula may have worked, and that value could likely be created from cloning it. Cloning just may work. I can't shake off the feeling, though, that a bit of misinformation is being spread here.
[edit for clarification]: Of course, both the author's post and my response is solely opinion, which makes my use of the word misinformation, well, misinformation. What I mean to say is that I can't help but draw comparisons to "get rich quick" schemes, where opinion was packaged in such a way that people took it as fact.
It's my opinion on my personal blog, not fact. I hope that was clear.
Also, he forgets that there are numbers less than 1%.
2) i'm just jealous that he got real time experience in learning to scale his servers to support the crazy growth in users. not many people in the world have experienced viral growth with their webapps or startups. so congrats to Mark.
But yeah, it can still pay out pretty handsomely...
The latter went viral on the back of press and wasn't inherently viral. threewords.me is inherently viral and has only spread in a small area of the big social graph. That's why it is cloneable right now.
As stated above I can't think of one single instance where a clone product or derivative of a viral product or idea has itself gone viral. Whether that product is threewords.me, chatroulette, all your base are belong to us or hotmail.
Analogy used here is to forwarded emails - every so often you find the same theme pop up again.
Is there any link or any comparison that can be made to going viral and urban legends? Urban legends end up tapping into human nature/brain wet-wiring and hence have huge longevity.
Perhaps sites which go viral have something similar?