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How I Got My First 1000 Users in 1 Day

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Re: How I Got My First 1000 Users in 1 Day

#61

Post by vineetch »

To get more users, have you tried approaching bloggers in different niches with different article ideas? The use cases for your app are different for different sets of people. Just write a one paragraph abstract about your app and email bloggers and editors to see if they'll cover your just released app.

Some headline and abstract ideas when you approach bloggers:

1) Tech/Business -- Popcorn: The hot new app to network at tech conferences

2) Student Websites/Newspapers -- The messaging app you need when a zombie apocalypse happens at SDSU (insert campus here)

3) Dating Blogs -- The newest app for singles: Popcorn lets you chat with others in high density bar areas

4) General -- When disasters strike, Popcorn lets you talk to others in your vicinity

5) Social media bloggers -- What are young teens using if not Facebook? Apps like Popcorn: hyper-local and addictive

6) Music -- Perfect for Coachella and SXSW: Popcorn lets you chat with others at music festivals

7) City Websites/Local -- New app "Popcorn" lets neighbors stay connected on what's happening on the block

8) Gaming -- Popcorn, the app you need to coordinate your next LAN party

If you get a bunch of these articles and blog posts up in the next week or two, it can help push that 1,000 number up higher.

Re: How I Got My First 1000 Users in 1 Day

#62

Post by avalaunch »

Namrog84 wrote: post #21
drum wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why?

It's promoting repeated posting of the same article in attempts to get lucky. It borders in the grey area of spam. Spam works. But it's still spam.

As the author notes, the fact that he finally did get a bunch of upvotes sort of proves that his posting wasn't spam to begin with. It was relevant to the community. What it shows more than anything else is that the system for achieving the coveted front page status is broken. I'm not sure what a good solution would be though.

Re: How I Got My First 1000 Users in 1 Day

#63

Post by AznHisoka »

kaffeinecoma wrote: post #26
drum wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what would you use ?

You should use "User.count", which will do something like "select count(*) from users". "Users.all.count" will needlessly read in all users into memory and then return a count. That might work OK for 1000 users, but beyond that?

Yup. But even that takes a long time to run in Postgres if you got millions of rows. I usually run User.last.id - User.first.id, and that usually gives me the # of rows (give or take)

Re: How I Got My First 1000 Users in 1 Day

#64

Post by benologist »

jcutrell wrote: post #40
benologist wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of us aren't here to be the audience for whatever startups and sites that treat HN like a marketing tool. This morning when I checked HN there was 4 advertisements on the front page excluding the official yc hiring notices - exitround, envato, statuspage.io, aws. 42floors' the other week described HN's front page as part of their SEO campaign - we're literally being exploited just to boost their visibility on go…

I agree with this. At the same time, I'm quite glad the OP reposted a few times. I may not have seen this app otherwise. The hustle required to delete and repost doesn't feel spammy to me. And, furthermore, the original post made it to the front page and retained its location per the algorithm, which gives a lot of power to time. I think the value prop for a lot of HN readers here isn't so much about whether or not t…

I think it's pretty easy to separate - this is a place where people like patio11 might tell you why you're doing it wrong, that's the value of HN. If all you want is traffic you're just wasting this opportunity.

Not to mention this is bad traffic for most purposes. There was a site that posted followup numbers the other day with I think 70 trials and 1 paid customer out of 15,000 visitors... you can't build a company that way.

Re: How I Got My First 1000 Users in 1 Day

#65

Post by marcomassaro »

vineetch wrote: post #61

To get more users, have you tried approaching bloggers in different niches with different article ideas? The use cases for your app are different for different sets of people. Just write a one paragraph abstract about your app and email bloggers and editors to see if they'll cover your just released app. Some headline and abstract ideas when you approach bloggers: 1) Tech/Business -- Popcorn: The hot new app to netwo…

this

Re: How I Got My First 1000 Users in 1 Day

#67

Post by meowface »

dugmartin wrote: post #53
drum wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was probably my most embarrassing oversight. Your first point is the way it's working. I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to make that work without segmenting the map into fixed cells... any thoughts?

You should just make the text from 1 to 2 miles show at 50% alpha, and the 25% alpha from 2 to 3 miles.

Does this really solve the problem though? What happens if someone 3 miles away is talking to someone who's 1 mile away from themselves, but 4 miles away from you? Then you'd see the transparent text of them talking to some person you can't see messages from, yet also see transparent text of them responding to people you can see messages from.

I personally don't see how you could completely avoid this without some kind of fixed regions, unless you required people to do some kind of an "@user Hey..." for every message so that you would know if you share the same sphere with the destination user. This makes it more tedious and less fun, though, plus it takes away the whole idea of multicasting.

Re: How I Got My First 1000 Users in 1 Day

#68

Post by drum »

vineetch wrote: post #61

To get more users, have you tried approaching bloggers in different niches with different article ideas? The use cases for your app are different for different sets of people. Just write a one paragraph abstract about your app and email bloggers and editors to see if they'll cover your just released app. Some headline and abstract ideas when you approach bloggers: 1) Tech/Business -- Popcorn: The hot new app to netwo…

DUUUUDE! my mind just got blown. I haven't tried this. Great idea. And no way, you even wrote the headlines?!

> 2) Student Websites/Newspapers -- The messaging app you need when a zombie apocalypse happens at SDSU (insert campus here)

hahaha that would be a hit.

Re: How I Got My First 1000 Users in 1 Day

#69

Post by rhizome »

jcutrell wrote: post #40
benologist wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of us aren't here to be the audience for whatever startups and sites that treat HN like a marketing tool. This morning when I checked HN there was 4 advertisements on the front page excluding the official yc hiring notices - exitround, envato, statuspage.io, aws. 42floors' the other week described HN's front page as part of their SEO campaign - we're literally being exploited just to boost their visibility on go…

I agree with this. At the same time, I'm quite glad the OP reposted a few times. I may not have seen this app otherwise. The hustle required to delete and repost doesn't feel spammy to me. And, furthermore, the original post made it to the front page and retained its location per the algorithm, which gives a lot of power to time. I think the value prop for a lot of HN readers here isn't so much about whether or not t…

I may not have seen this app otherwise.

Right, because of all the spam and overposting. You visit "New" from time to time and know what I'm talking about, I'm sure.

Historically, there is no solution to this outside of moderation and banning, so it's just as likely that HN has jumped the shark for most individual purposes and people will have to move on to other venues that are not being clogged by The Verge and Business Insider using them for spike traffic.

Re: How I Got My First 1000 Users in 1 Day

#70

Post by meowface »

chaz wrote: post #27
drum wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what would you use ?

In Rails 4, User.count and User.all.count both do the same thing: SELECT COUNT(*) FROM "users" In earlier versions, User.all.count executes: SELECT "users".* FROM "users" because it is pulling back all fields from all users into memory, instead of just asking the database to check the index for a count.

This is an easy mix-up to make considering .length, .count, and .size are all aliases.
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