Ask HN: What should I do to make this product viral?

Joognu.com allows you to capture, weave and store memories with your child and gift them when your child grows up.

It's fundamentally private. You store those memories here which you would not like to share on Facebook. But the product essentially has to have some viral features as well so that more and more parents become aware about it.

Keeping that in mind we have given few features like below:

- Parents can selectively share individual memories (photos, videos, etc.) on Facebook - Parents can share the entire timeline with their relatives and friends. - Relatives and friends can only see those memories which are kept open by Parents on the timeline. - Relatives and friends can like those memories and comment on them. - Parents can invite people to get more free space (We give 5GB free space to start with)

We are getting some virality due to these features but not enough.

What other features / benefits you suggest we should provide to make Joognu.com more viral?

- Yup that was the primary reason for revamp. It's too early to tell if this is working or not but yes I hear what you say.

And yes tracking is something we are very powerful at thanks to our partners who are fantastic sales people.

That's easy:

First and foremost, don't ask how to make it go viral in a public forum.

Second, let the news spread through agents provocateurs that it's a terrific program, so terrific you're having difficulty protecting it from thieves and pirates, but you've created what you think is a bulletproof protection scheme to defend your magnum opus against the barbarian hordes, and you're privately confident about your protection scheme.

Then step back and watch.

> What other features / benefits you suggest we should provide to make Joognu.com more viral?

You're way too sincere and eager. You need to adopt the "briar patch" strategy: "Oh please, mister boss man, don't throw me into the briar patch ... pleeeease!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br'er_Rabbit

Quote: "In the Cherokee tale about the briar patch, 'the fox and the wolf throw the trickster rabbit into a thicket from which the rabbit quickly escapes.'"

For example, you link to your site on HN, and receive 100 visitors day one. It's a great service, and those 100 people share it with enough people to receive another 150 visitors the next day. Your new visitor traffic per day goes...

1. 100

2. 150

3. 225

4. 338

5. 506

6. 759

7. 1,139

8. 1,708

9. 2,563

10. 3,844

...

20. 221,683

Within a few weeks you're receiving a quarter million new visitors a day.

Now, if HN sends 100 visitors day one, and those users generate 80 new visitors day two, you get...

1. 100

2. 80

3. 64

4. 51

5. 41

6. 33

...

20. 1

Now you end up with only one visitor after three weeks.

In one case you're at the top of the world with the next big hit, and the other you have absolutely no traffic.

You see situation number two happen all the time. You get a spike of traffic and it fades away over the following week. As you can see above though, the difference in a spike of traffic fading away, or going through the roof isn't that large. We're not talking about one site being awful and the other being the best thing since sliced bread. We're talking about 100 people referring 80 people and 100 people referring 150 people. Not a huge difference in interest, but the traffic results can be staggering.