Getting Users Is Hard
41–50 of 110 posts
Re: Getting Users Is Hard
#42Does everyone that is going to benefit from the system (receive notices, click attend, etc) have to download an app? That will be an powerful hindrance. People inherently don't want to download more apps, there is a lot of friction in that process. Remove as much friction as you can there. Narrow your action / marketing focus to get started. Perhaps see if you can promote your app at destinations (to the co-benefit o…
This seems like the best idea. I am friends with the owner of a high end bar and I am hosting my own events giving free chili to anyone willing to talk to about my app. I know many people there too. My other idea is asking my friends I know to go to the bar and form different groups of people each time. I would create the events ahead of time then show it to them when they all get there.
Re: Getting Users Is Hard
#43Some things to think about - not necessarily true, but just a brain dump:
>I'm building a mobile app to create and share social events with your friends. A social event would be going to the bar, house party, or meeting up for coffee. You can fill out a simple form (event name, description, date, time) and post to a feed for your friends to see. Your friends can notify you they're going by pressing the "attend" button.
Have you tried selecting people you want to hang out with at a bar and sending a text message to them that says "Hey, we're going to bar X at 5 if you want to tag along" to validate the concept.
>Now I'm trying to get my first users. Yesterday was my first day. I made a spreadsheet of everyone I can message that live in my target area. My list is 82 people. Yesterday I contacted 24 people and got one person to sign up, I was hoping to get five. But most of the people I messaged didn't even respond.
Instead of contacting the 24 people to ask them to sign up, tell them you're going to have coffee at place X. Basically, use the spreadsheet as your app and validate the concept.
Generally speaking, if people are not coming for you, they're coming for someone else: the crazy guy, the wicked smart girl, the hot one, or the one who's always funnier when drunk. If you're none of those, your job is to set it up and do a "casting" of people who go well together, and do so in a certain context.
Someone will invite you and you'll say "I don't know...". They'll say "X and Y will be there, too" and that may change your mind because X knows more than anyone on some esoteric subject you love, and Y is just so much fun to hang out with.
Sooo... Maybe you want to focus on the Person/Venue/Clique fit and the application automatically invites the right people when you're going to the right venue. The right people for the right venue, but also the right people who gel together in that venue. I wouldn't invite Y to a bar because he doesn't hold his liquor and acts douchey, so the application embeds that in its graph. See Person/Venue/Clique fit below.
- There maybe an asymmetry in that people are more interested to know what you're doing than to let you know what they're doing. Unless there is a vanity component in there.
- Is it a broadcast or personal invites? If it is a broadcast, maybe I don't know how you feel about me and feel I'd bother if I came. Me: "Hey! I saw you beaconed earlier". You: "Uhmm.. Sure!".
- Platform fragmentation: how is your beacon broadcasting? Do I have to have the app installed to know where you are, or does it broadcast to Instagram, add a WhatsApp status, post something on Facebook? or text message [supposing it's invite/private] and Twitter or similar if it's not.
- Maybe there's "diffusion of resposibility" going on. If you invite me personally, I'll feel much more compelled than if I see it on a broadcast because I might think surely other people might join you and you'll be fine. If everyone has that thought, nobody will show up.
- Person/Venue/Clique Fit: Person A is cool with Person B and Person C, however, Person A would hangout with Person B in venue Y, but not with Person C. Person A would also hangout with Person C in venue Z, but not necessarily with Person B. It can be for a variety of reasons: perception, image, precedents, etc. Regulars Person A meets in a venue might not appreciate Person B for example. Usually, when a person goes to a venue, there's a small set of people they want to be with at that venue.
- People might have "spots" they don't want other people to joing them at.
Re: Getting Users Is Hard
#44I would like to comment a little bit on my competitors. Facebook and meetup.com are search based events. If you want to find something to do you have to search it. You could get invited as well but if you don't you will never know about an event unless you actively look for it.
They are not the same culture ethier. I would not go on meetup.com to see if my friends are going to the bar. The same goes for Facebook. Also I'm 21 most of my friends don't use Facebook. I went on meetup.com to find coding events or networking events. A lot of my friends have never heard of meetup.com.
My problem is I hate texting people every time I'm trying to go out for the night. If people don't already have plans that I can go to, I have to create the plans. Then I have get everyone on board with them. I have texted like over 20 people doing this sometimes, and we don't always have a group chat, or want one. People hate group chats sometimes because you get included in a conversation that you didn't even want to be included in the first place. Plus your phone dings too much with group chats. And some people can't make it due to timing, or simple they don't want to go. So I would love an app where I can just go on it, see what all my friends are doing that night, and go to their events.
Re: Getting Users Is Hard
#45As many people have said this is a very crowded space littered with dead apps. One of the biggest issues is that you ultimately will want some kind of “comments” section because communication is central to planning, which at that point you end up reinventing texting but as a worse interface as comments, and then people will just resort to texting. It’s not clear why this is so much better than a) texting, and b) post…
I'm am not encouraging people should go out. Just the people that already are if they want they can use my app.
Re: Getting Users Is Hard
#46It sounds like you don't have a good enough solution.
First app I did - 1,200 users in the first 24 hours, just with a brief Facebook post that everyone shared to their friends. If they're not sharing it, there's a problem there, especially if it's a social app. We paid a copywriter friend to post it a second time on Facebook, and it got 3,000 users within 24 hours. After that, further postings did little, but others sharing the app in their groups or things from the apps got lots of users in. Some interesting thing I spotted was someone posting the app, someone else complaining that the app sucked because X, then the poster telling them that the app was better now. Then we paid bloggers to review the app - the blogging ranked us well on Google, and we'd get 50% of our traffic through organic searches, thousands of visitors a month.
It was easy enough that the app and the whole company around it got acquired as a marketing channel. I think being a marketing channel is ideal these days for apps that have lots of users but are free, so if you can't get a lot of users right off the bat, it's just not going to work as a free app.
My cofounder did a sports based site. He got millions of pageviews less than a year in, although they spent a little on Facebook marketing. They're worth millions of dollars now.
I'm doing another side project years later, something small I put half an hour into every day. It started off with about 100 visitors/week from posting on Reddit, HN, forums, etc. One person shared it on Twitter. I mentioned it a few months later on HN, after some heavy improvements, and it got a spike of about 300 users in one day. The spike was enough to rank the site on Bing, and it's at over 400 users/week today (10% returning).
I'm not here to brag; but I'm no Zuckerberg, didn't even get into YC, so it's doable and repeatable with the right techniques. You shouldn't have to contact every person from a list, lol.
First thing you should do is look at your competitor. Yours is probably Facebook Events. How is your app ten times better? Find a way to do things faster, cheaper, better. Or in this case, probably faster. You might have to remove the friction of downloading an app, maybe have invites in web, WhatsApp or SMS. You might want to try instant apps.
Re: Getting Users Is Hard
#47This micro version of clique-only Facebook events is not bad. If someone builds a usable version of this that will eat into a significant portion of WhatsApp groups. I believe if your app can just record my video, then transcribe my audio to figure out details of my plan (location, time, etc.) and then post an Instagram story with my video plus metadata in an elegant way with a poll widget, that is something I would…
That would be a great growth hack. I wonder if instagram has any APIs for this. I don't know anything about processing speech but maybe if you posted on my app it would create a story on instagram or make a twitter post. Snapchat would be better for this because it's more private, not everybody wants everyone they know to come to an event they post.
Re: Getting Users Is Hard
#48Probably not super easy getting folks in your niche in a global pandemic, yeah?
The restrictions are very loose where I live, Houston, TX. I don't encourage using the app unless you are already going out regularly with your friends.
Re: Getting Users Is Hard
#49I would like to comment a little bit on my competitors. Facebook and meetup.com are search based events. If you want to find something to do you have to search it. You could get invited as well but if you don't you will never know about an event unless you actively look for it. They are not the same culture ethier. I would not go on meetup.com to see if my friends are going to the bar. The same goes for Facebook. Als…
You may be on to something with respect to culture, but that is where the hard work will be: user experience design and marketing that codifies the culture into a brand that can distinguish your product among the sea of commodity social networking software.
Re: Getting Users Is Hard
#50I would like to comment a little bit on my competitors. Facebook and meetup.com are search based events. If you want to find something to do you have to search it. You could get invited as well but if you don't you will never know about an event unless you actively look for it. They are not the same culture ethier. I would not go on meetup.com to see if my friends are going to the bar. The same goes for Facebook. Als…
You may be on to something with respect to culture, but that is where the hard work will be: user experience design and marketing that codifies the culture into a brand that can distinguish your product among the sea of commodity social networking software.
Well my signup screen (first thing the user sees) has a background photo of a night life party to set the tone. Maybe I should make it darkmode themed to set the tone more but I don't want to discourage people using this to meet up for coffee. I strongly agree though, lots of hard work will be needed to be put in culture.