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We (unexpectedly) got 60K users in 60 hours - What we learned

patrickambron.me

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Re: We (unexpectedly) got 60K users in 60 hours - What we learned

#101

Post by billpatrianakos »

X-Istence wrote: post #91
klbarry wrote: post #84

Interesting! I made my own guide a while back for my friends, with great success. 1a) Make a "brand" with your middle name Google your first and last name. If you’re like most people on earth, you’re one of many with your particular combination. So how can you rank higher? Never fight a battle you don’t have to. Pick a middle name, real or imaginary. Google your new full name. Example: My name is Kevin Barry. The Goo…

This has worked well for me personally. My dad and I have the same name, and I share a fairly common name for Dutch people. My name is Bert Regeer, but I always go by Bert JW Regeer. In conversation I am still Bert, but everywhere else I am Bert JW. This solves a lot of problems. People no longer get me confused with my dad or some guy working for Shell, when I sign up for mail or anything along those lines it has my…

I'm wondering how far this goes and how it affects other areas of life. So you've branded yourself with a new middle name that's either made up or a variation on your real one. So when you open a PayPal account do you still use the new name? You mention this helps when signing up for things that end with you getting mail. So if you get mail sent to your new name and it's something you paid for, maybe it's a subscription, maybe not, then I assume companies begin knowing you by the new name and it eventually gets into your credit report.

I never realized how easy it is to change your name in such an unofficial way but still have it almost be taken as if it were official. After all, when you sign up for a subscription you can call yourself anything you like but still put the name appearing on your credit card in the payment area as these are often two different things. So then who gets the credit? The cardholder version of you or the new name version?

I think this is really interesting and may have implications beyond just brand management. Or maybe I'm reading into it too much?

Re: We (unexpectedly) got 60K users in 60 hours - What we learned

#102

Post by 69_years_and »

Just a thought - some people go to a lot of effort to 'hide' who they are by ensuring their name does not turn up - or if it does its so mixed in with many result's that it would be hard from a casual review to determine this is the John or Jane Doe one is after - while others a lot of effort to make sure a search turns up the correct Mesers Doe.

Re: We (unexpectedly) got 60K users in 60 hours - What we learned

#103

Post by patrickambron »

69_years_and wrote: post #102

Just a thought - some people go to a lot of effort to 'hide' who they are by ensuring their name does not turn up - or if it does its so mixed in with many result's that it would be hard from a casual review to determine this is the John or Jane Doe one is after - while others a lot of effort to make sure a search turns up the correct Mesers Doe.

Our view is pretty simple on this: Whether you like it or not, people are going to Google you, and they expect to find you. 75% of HR depts. are now required to Google candidates before searching for them, 30% of all daily searches are for someone's name. If you don't show up, you miss an opportunity to mold that first impression.

You might as well be proactive and make sure you have some relevant content well optimized. Otherwise you might be represented by something negative posted by somebody else, or something irrelevant, or mistaken for somebody else all together--my cofounder Pete couldn't get an internship in college because he was being mistaken for a drug dealer

In other words, if you don't define yourself, something else will.

Re: We (unexpectedly) got 60K users in 60 hours - What we learned

#105

Post by patrickambron »

dave_chenell wrote: post #90

30% is a awesome conversion. Any specifics on how you were able to get it up so high?

1) We happen to have a value proposition that appeals to almost everyone. Almost everyone has Googled their name, and thought about improving their results in some way or another--maybe there's something embarrassing, or maybe someone else with their name owns all the results, or maybe they have certain things they just wished showed up.

2) We worked hard on our home page --we explain what it does, who we are, and how it works in as little words as possible, and lead you right to sign up (we tweaked this language so many times I can't tell you) Everytime it seems clear enough to us, we would put it front of random person. If they didn't completely understand what we did and want to sign up, we went back to the drawing board. We did this over and over again.

--For those who need more validation we lead you to more info: our company story/mission, our press, testimonials, et. I call these "credibility boosters"

3) We give a lot away for free. People like free stuff

Re: We (unexpectedly) got 60K users in 60 hours - What we learned

#106

Post by patrickambron »

K2h wrote: post #95
patrickambron wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you dislike the quote, or the fact that it's from Fox news?

I dislike Fox.

Can't say I blame you, actually. At the time of Launch, it looked like our widest reaching "crediblity booster". I think we should go ahead and change that now

Re: We (unexpectedly) got 60K users in 60 hours - What we learned

#107

Post by patrickambron »

Thanks again everyone, I'm truly flattered. We had some great discussions (have some catch-up to do today, had no idea I'd be spending so much time on HN :)).

Since so many people were curious to see the affect HN would have on our signups, I think I'm going to do a follow up post next week.

Re: We (unexpectedly) got 60K users in 60 hours - What we learned

#108

Post by klbarry »

patrickambron wrote: post #88
klbarry wrote: post #84

Interesting! I made my own guide a while back for my friends, with great success. 1a) Make a "brand" with your middle name Google your first and last name. If you’re like most people on earth, you’re one of many with your particular combination. So how can you rank higher? Never fight a battle you don’t have to. Pick a middle name, real or imaginary. Google your new full name. Example: My name is Kevin Barry. The Goo…

We should hire you ;)

Sorry for hijacking your post! I definitely did not expect it to go to the top of the page - it must be partly ranked based on text length.

I'm happily employed, but shoot me an email (in profile) and I'll see what I can do for you ;)

Re: We (unexpectedly) got 60K users in 60 hours - What we learned

#109

Post by X-Istence »

X-Istence wrote: post #91
klbarry wrote: post #84

Interesting! I made my own guide a while back for my friends, with great success. 1a) Make a "brand" with your middle name Google your first and last name. If you’re like most people on earth, you’re one of many with your particular combination. So how can you rank higher? Never fight a battle you don’t have to. Pick a middle name, real or imaginary. Google your new full name. Example: My name is Kevin Barry. The Goo…

This has worked well for me personally. My dad and I have the same name, and I share a fairly common name for Dutch people. My name is Bert Regeer, but I always go by Bert JW Regeer. In conversation I am still Bert, but everywhere else I am Bert JW. This solves a lot of problems. People no longer get me confused with my dad or some guy working for Shell, when I sign up for mail or anything along those lines it has my…

Since "billpatrianakos" asked me a question that is related (and it seems his comment is [dead]), let me clarify and state that "JW" is actually my middle initials.

Re: We (unexpectedly) got 60K users in 60 hours - What we learned

#110

Post by ricardobeat »

While this break-down is very interesting, it all boils down to one thing: they announced an innovative feature that interests a lot of people. Things could have played out differently but the outcome would be the same - lots of signups.

If someone from the company is reading: I found out I already have an account (probably from the time it launched), but I can't access it. Login doesn't work and when I try to reset my password it says "e-mail not found".

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