How Hipster Got 10K Signups In Two Days Without Revealing What It Does | Hacker News Reader

How Hipster Got 10K Signups In Two Days Without Revealing What It Does

techcrunch.com

33 pointsssclafani30 comments

So TechCrunch is now promoting themselves as a critical component in the substanceless promotion of a pre-launch website whose purpose is undetermined?

Their mothers must be very proud.

Images also exist for: http://city-images.usehipster.com/boulder.jpg http://city-images.usehipster.com/losangeles.jpg http://city-images.usehipster.com/newyork.jpg http://city-images.usehipster.com/boston.jpg http://city-images.usehipster.com/miami.jpg http://city-images.usehipster.com/chicago.jpg

but not Portland or Seattle? And it's called "Hipster"? Phhhhfffttt

Dry testing at its best.

1) Landing page with email capture + vague promise of something cool

2) ???

3) Profit!

I wouldn't be surprised if they don't have a product yet and are still figuring things out...

EDIT: Just realised I am a hypocrite... http://littlecosm.com (I assure you that there is a product behind this, though!)

I wouldn't be surprised if it's all a massive hoax to see how many people you can get, with a little clever marketing, to sign up for a site that doesn't even exist.

Though now that it's been so successful, it'd kindof be a waste not to monetize the hoax.

Isn't that the whole point for the practice of lean startups? Where you validate that there is a market by asking people to give their email address before you go and start spending time and money on it.

Still feels a bit "icky" to me, but then I like the act of building stuff itself.

It is, although normally with a Dry Test you are a little more specific so that you know what product the hype is or is not being validated for.

Hipster's hype simply validates that people like hype (and pictures of cities).

Registered. ;)

it worked!

the site looks great. Registered ;)

Heh one of the comments posted this link:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:suTSLVu...

Which shows it to be another Q&A site.

Hmm. Hipster style Q/A for major cities. Like a Gilt/Quora. Could work

Illustrates how much tech adoption is driven by hype and bandwagon behaviour, and not by actual content or usefulness.

Isn't that just another way of saying, 'Illustrates how much tech adoption is driven by marketing'?

wait a second though, nobody's adopted it yet. so i'd rephrase: Illustrates how much tech 'journalism'adoption is driven by hype and bandwagon behaviour ...

"But just like the hipster tribe themselves, what Hipster does is besides the point."

Really? It's probably going to matter one of these days ...

Don't question TechCrunch, it'll boggle your mind.

Turns out Hipster is Q&A for places:

https://twitter.com/#!/yongfook/status/27198058643066880

Once you signup it tells you to invite 3 more people and says the more people you invite the sooner you'll get access. Not to take away from all the signups they've received but I'm sure a good percent are people just entering fake emails with their referral ID considering you don't even need to confirm your signup.

It's like a pyramid scheme!

except without any money!

So there's been a lot of talk about hipster - the super stealth startup that amassed a butt load of subscribers without revealing what it does. There's been a lot of talk about how "brilliant" a success it already is.

TOTAL BS IN MY OPINION

First of all, its just the good ol SV old boys club at work. How did the startup get prime coverage on TC their first few hours of splash page activation? guess the founding team has some great connections.

secondly, i believe only techies and irrelevant early adopters invite people to a site they have never used in return for "beta" access. 90% of the world doesn't even know what beta access is. 80% of these sign ups will never return.

What the F* does this validate?

I'll give it up for a great name and connects I would kill for, but these guys have done absolutely nothing yet as far as i am concerned. Get this shit off your homepage TMZ... i mean tech crunch.

What do you think?

We borrowed the same sign up process for http://torbit.com and are seeing the same viral results, even though our product is a lot less consumer facing than theirs.

I wouldn't be surprised to see this become standard functionality for startup landing pages.

Could you explain this signup process a little bit more? I don't see anything unusual at Torbit...

After you register we give you a custom link that offers you priority access if you get your friends to register using that link.

Are you verifying the referred emails? What percentage of users are taking the bait to get earlier access?

That's a damn good picture. If they had put up an even slightly less cool picture, the number of signups would not be so crazy.

With technology, as with everything else in life, appearance matters, and this proves it.

Must... fight... the envy. Seriously though, congratulations to the people behind it. I'd be so excited if I got that kind of response and I'd feel a lot of pressure to not let all those interested people down.

If you have to ask what hipster does, you're not hip enough to get it.

As the hispter answered the straight-faced young mid-western in my office, "What's a hipster?"

I wish they would graduate Alexia to cover better stories. Give her some of those Glengerry Glen Ross leads, Michael and Erick, instead of making her trawl through Hacker News threads.

Other than the ironic name use, what's the point of throwing 460 words on this?

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