Clever tactic for generating buzz. | Hacker News Reader

Clever tactic for generating buzz.

forrst.com

42 pointsmhunter20 comments

This site is using an interesting invite strategy. It opens its signup window once a day at a random time and for only 15 minutes.

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I don't really know how successful a tactic like this would be, long term. It's certainly "unique" and fun, but (to paraphrase a presentation I listened to a while back), their greatest enemy is the "back button" anyway, and I think they're losing the battle. I clicked on the website, but there was no clear value expressed in it for me... "Forrst is a place for designers and developers to share inspiring code, screenshots, and links with their peers"... Don't tell me, show me! I like cute ideas, but I think their target audience won't have time (unless they're procrastinating) to pursue things like this...

I clicked back, opened a tab, and went to reddit :\

Still, fun idea.

Clever tactics failure: I'm pretty sure I won't visit Forrst again; I don't know why would I want to.

All I got was a notice of some time window when you actually might see what it is for real. You obviously need a good reason to see what's in there before you land on their front page, in order to let this sample of exclusivity grab you along.

Yeah. Every time I visit it gets +1 waste of my time because I always hit it outside the window. Just a matter of time before I tune it out.

But you come back and try again, don't you?

This site is using an interesting signup strategy. It opens the signup window at a random time once a day and for only 15 minutes.

Anyone have any other examples that are like this?

LittleGreenFootballs (a semi-political blog) has used random account creation windows for the last several years, to my understanding. It seems to heighten urgency, create a sense of exclusivity in the blog commenting community, and achieved the original goal of putting a big barrier in front of trolling the site. (You have to keep an eye on it for weeks, snag an account, THEN troll.)

I don't think I'd ever implement this myself, though.

Something like this works for existing sites rolling out new features/products...but for a new site? it's more or less suicide.

The one thing that might help them, is if some blogger finds it interesting enough to post it. But I don't see that happening unless there is something special about the founders.(i.e. Blah Blah's(invented Gmail at Google) new site)

I saw an email form and clicked back.

I must say I don't see anything going for this approach except novelty, and even then, I am unlikely to tell other people about the site.

I think "buzz" was a bad word choice on the submitter's part. In terms of using psychology to get your e-mail address to expose you to the site, though, I think it could be quite effective.

3 points in 4 minutes; it seems to be working.

No, that's the HN title post on creating buzz. When I saw the bait-n-switch I clicked back. I have better things to do with my time than wait on sign-ups for yet-another-stack-overflow.

Now, if that link had gone to a well-written blog post discussing their process and some data to back it up, they would have gotten a viewer, not a misclick.

Do software trial periods generate much buzz? Because that's what this is, only it's a website, it's free and I have to wait on average 12 hours to actually see it without registering. I fail to see any logic, sorry.

very weird and useless

Clever: "Marked by wit or ingenuity." I personally wouldn't consider it witty or ingenious, but perhaps I'm missing some insight into what problem this solves in an ingenious way. Lacking that insight, I would propose the word "novel," as in "new and unusual."

I think it's more of a psychological hack, like when you add a more expensive option to a menu and people start ordering the second most expensive thing more than they would otherwise.

In this case, they're promising more than they're actually delivering right now but present you with a way to potentially get better access. It's not as strong as it could be, but I felt more of an impulse to fill in the box than I usually would with pages like this.

Vaguely related, I have a "coming soon" page at http://coder.io/ where I tried to integrate a couple of psychological tricks, but it's not as good as this one, for sure :-)

I happily signed up on coder.io because I knew enough about the site to sign up.

In this case, they're promising more than they're actually delivering right now but present you with a way to potentially get better access.

That is it. I need to know a little more to sign up. I don't mind participating in their registration game if I can look forward to getting access.

wget, diff, cronjob, done.

Very crafty signup strategy! Exclusivity creates desire and demand

or just use google buzz

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