Quote:
Originally Posted by lazycash
Good questions, I don't think he did any marketing, it was just one of those instances where viral word of mouth took over and it steamrolled hard last Dec and Jan once the url got out in the press. I saw it in tons of online articles and tv. The site was easy to duplicate and a few of the scripts out there are better than what's on the site. The only other similar site with significant traffic seems to be shufflepeople.com, but he's seems almost as clueless on how to effectively monetize the traffic.
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BUT.... the viral marketing doesn't happen until something becomes popular or it at least has a small group of people using it. It's a cam site not a message board or blog or whatever. Where as on a messageboard for example someone can make a post and they are fine with coming back several hours or even days later to read the responses. This was a cam site. If no one is on cam you leave. If you are on cam for a couple minutes and no one comes in to chat with you, you turn your cam off and leave and never come back.
Once several hundred people are using it and there is at least a small group of people on at all times, then I can see it being viral because it is something worth spreading and talking about to other people. Who is going to say "hey go check out this new site called chatroulette I sat on there last night with my cam on for an hour and no one poped into my room" or " I went to this site called chatroulette but there was nobody on cam".
It's hard enough to launch any site like a classified site or dating site, but to launch a cam site is 100x harder since you need people on cam and viewers at the same time, all the time to make it have any chance of taking off... and to do all of that with no budget for advertising, no studio to help try to cover all the times slots... how in the world did he get the site to where it became viral. how did he launch it and have it get traction ????