Ask HN: Has anyone used content generation to jumpstart community?

#1

Post by Jaxxonical » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 1:55 PM UTC

When Reddit was first starting, the founders used to create dozens of fake accounts, and talk to one another.. It helped give a sense of community, and get people to use the site.

There are a number of services out there, such as inb0x.com that do paid forum posting to try to help replicate this same process.

There are also text-focused services such as Textbroker, or even Mechanical Turk..

Has anyone used such services to get started? Were the posts any good?

Did it help at all, or did it just look cheesy?

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone used content generation to jumpstart community?

#2

Post by barnsweetman » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 1:59 PM UTC

I did it for http://www.StatusCrap.com when I was just getting started with it. Definitely helped on the SEO side with dynamic content and also with creating the sense of community effect. There's no shame in it :)

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone used content generation to jumpstart community?

#3

Post by Jaxxonical » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 2:43 PM UTC

barnsweetman wrote: post #2

I did it for http://www.StatusCrap.com when I was just getting started with it. Definitely helped on the SEO side with dynamic content and also with creating the sense of community effect. There's no shame in it :)

Which service did you use, if you don't mind me asking?

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone used content generation to jumpstart community?

#4

Post by barnsweetman » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 3:07 PM UTC

Jaxxonical wrote: post #3

barnsweetman wrote: post #2

I did it for http://www.StatusCrap.com when I was just getting started with it. Definitely helped on the SEO side with dynamic content and also with creating the sense of community effect. There's no shame in it :)

Which service did you use, if you don't mind me asking?

I never used a service, I usually just got some sort of conversations started with different profiles and eventually real people started pitching in. Just can take a bit of time and depends on your traffic.