Ask HN: Viral Marketing | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Viral Marketing

21 pointsdanecjensen15 comments

Cam.ly is a video monitoring platform. We sell cameras that stream and record video to the internet. You can place our cameras to watch anything and you can watch from anywhere. We originally envisioned our product as a Security Camera, but could work well as a baby monitor, nanny cam, or dog watcher. We built this demo (http://cam.ly/pinata_buster) to showcase our product (keep posted for a blog post about how we did it). We would like some feedback from HN. What do you think of demo? Does the demo help you understand our product? And finally how do we make this go viral?

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The differentiating factor over the typical webcam software is the fact that the data is stored in the cloud, and can be retrieved and replayed at any time, right?

If you want to get a lot of eyeballs looking at it, what about finding something that people will watch, will want to "rewind", and will want to share?

People love puppies, so what about finding a local breeder and asking them if they'd mind having a camera there in return for showcasing them? And allow people to watch not only the current streaming version, but the old archived footage and vote & share their favourite moments? It doesn't have to be puppies, but anything that people enjoy watching... though population that might be looking at puppies might have overlaps with, say, population that might have kids and may be in the market for a nanny-cam or something...

WARNING: My brutally honest opinion ahead.

The quality of this demo horrible. The UI is hideously blocky, oversized, and ugly. The pinata/bat look like a chopstick on a rollerblade trying to hit a pair of yellow truck nuts. The lighting is horrible and it looks like it's set up inside a dog house. The camera you're using (which I presume you also sell) is very low video quality.

It really just looks very chintzy and not well done. As a "showcase" for your product it is a very bad one.

I'd call this a prototype and start over from scratch. Make it look really beautiful and slick. Scale up the size to a real size pinata. Use a real baseball bat. Use a real video camera. Light it properly. Have an awesome prize inside for the person who breaks it.

Basically, go all out and make it amazing or don't bother.

I'm afraid that the general public will perceive the demo as "creepy".

Didn't even see the demo and I felt creeped out by the HN description.

This is cool, but geeky. What I mean by that is that it's cool in the sense that you've basically created an interface to the internet. If you want it to go viral, your best chance is probably to document how you did this and provide any source code, electronic diagrams, etc, etc.

I think you're sending a confusing message. If I were to do this my self, I probably wouldn't buy your product. I'd get a cheap laptop, with a broken screen or an old small form factor computer and roll my own webcam. Your viral demo should be viral to people who are going to buy your products.

What demo could you create that someone who isn't nerdtastic would use?

Improve the design of the page and also explain how you're demonstrating the product. It's fun to muck around with, but also easy to completely forget who's behind it.

Iron your backdrop sheet - looks a bit lame. Get your logo printed on the backdrop too, and maybe a short catchphrase or bullet list of uses for your camera.

Could try to ride some coat tails by replacing the pinata with a baseball and the swinging stick with a bat and plug it during baseball season. Or rig up a leg and have a soccer ball in a cage.

It's a start and has potential though, I'll give you that.

I think it is hard to see from the demo what your product actually is and its ultimate purpose. To correct this I would add some product description details on the left or right of the video with a call to action, or noticeable link for more info. To make it viral, find an individual who is hated and currently hot in the news, advertise "hit x in the face", paper mache individuals image over a round piñata. I also would increase the sharing methods and make it so individuals encourage others to do the same, a twitter tool at minimum. Also allow voting on the next individual to be hit in the face.

Now if you do not agree with the violence, as some will, how about aligning you marketing with the product. For example: Offer to loan 20 free cameras to individuals living in a bad crime ridden area. Allow voting for the neighborhood and easy sharing tools so people can ask for votes. Next when a crime is recorded on the service, post images with a reward of a few hundred dollars or so for the first person to identify the suspect that leads to an arrest. You will need to do some PR work to get the word out for this to work but it should get some mainstream mentions. People may say it is against civil liberties, but this will work to your advantage with PR.

Guys, I like your logo. Very cleverly done. The demo is useful to understand what the solution can deliver.

Viral - In my opinion, a video is truly viral when my mom forwards it to me. That said, you can make a product video viral amongst in target market without it being to my definition. Do you know who is key target? If you do then a contest aimed at that group is likely your best path.

This is pretty cool me and my daughter are trying to break it.

My daughter had the following suggestions:

- Be able to spank the guy that fixes the setup

- Be able to it hit bob in different areas

- Sound effects

- Compete to go next

edit: Waiting for the machine to be fixed is more exciting than hitting it.

edit #2: Make it like the saw movie just with pinatas

I would make it go viral by doing some sort of contest giveaway. Encourage people to buy your camera and use the service, then make a YouTube video or blog post about their experience.

Tell your users that the best entry will receive _______ where _______ is a product or gift which is worth the effort of making a video or blog post about cam.ly

In this way you get other people to do your viral marketing for you. For even bigger success you can assign them points. For example:

10 points for a blog post about cam.ly, 20 points for a YouTube video about cam.ly, 10 points for a Twitter mention (possibly have some sort of adjustment based on how many followers they have).

This will encourage your users to spread the word about cam.ly to others on their own. If the contest prize is something like an iPad, it could cost you about $500 but chances are you will get far more than $500 worth of advertising value, backlinks, etc from the contest.

What if you planted cameras in a couple different cities (with building owners permission), and have people try and locate them? The first to hold up a "Cam.ly rules!" poster in front of the camera wins a free subscription...

make it hard so you build a bit of buzz while ppl try and figure out where they are. could be an ongoing thing...

Clickable: http://cam.ly/pinata_buster

A quick suggestion: add retweet and facebook like buttons to the pinata buster page to make it easier to share.

another vote, to add social media buttons on the page. I really don't understand whats going on. I press the live button, and what now ?

oh gosh just 'secretly' point them at some lame celeb randomly and have someone blog about seeing it.

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