Starting a business that depends on a community

[Alphathree33]

facebook, ebay, craigslist, etc. all require a community before they are useful.

A facebook with no friends is useless.

An ebay with no auctions is useless... and so on.

How did these people get the first few hundred users? Did they just beg and plead with family and friends? "Please post something on my blank auction site" ?

I don't see how more money or advertising could help... after all, even if you do a $1mil ad blitz and get 10K new visitors, all they're going to see is an empty site... and then they'll leave.

Strategies?

 

[Zolty]

ebay started through friends and family, then word of mouth. Myspace had a contest with its internal employees to sign people up, Tom is frequently quoted as saying something to the affect of "I am totally antisocial and I have 10 friends already".

 

[HammerCurl]

Well they were good ideas to begin with. Associate yourself with something people want, I joined facebook in like 2005 because one of my friends were doing it, was a neat concept aimed at college kids. Try to make it seem exclusive at first (maybe), then slowly release the scope of people. The more exclusive the more desirable. Think of a target audience, what they would want, and introduce to those people. Maybe have contests, gimmicks to join. I mean its a relatively similar principle to starting all businesses. You can't open a restaurant without a community so how do they attract people?

 

[Descartes]

These types of sites generally fall under what's being referred to as Web 2.0. Research on that alone should give you some more ideas.

All of the communities you have listed filled a niche that grew. That's probably obvious, but you're talking about the minority of sites that actually succeed in attracting so much traffic. Most of the time it's luck, imo, and I say that because few of these sites started with the intention of growing to what they are today.

In other words, I don't have your answer

 

[Cal166]

I was like who the fsck is this Tom guy when I signed up for myspace.

 

[Ns1]

or you pay people (ie digitalpoint) to fill up your ranks until you get the ball going

 

[EKKC]

Originally posted by: Cal166
I was like who the fsck is this Tom guy when I signed up for myspace.

i hate that photo of his.