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Comment by mattmaroon | Hacker News Reader

Any feedback would be appreciated.

Should work on your viral component. It sucks but people dont tend to send many invites out of the kindness of their hearts.

That's why we're giving a TV to whoever refers the winner. Any other ideas there would be greatly appreciated.

Oh I see that now. Ive trained myself to be a regular user and refuse to read anything :)

I would make a bigger deal out of your reward plan. Maybe a banner or something and repeat that on every tab.

Thanks, you're probably right. We've been making it progressively more noticeable, but probably should go farther.

Really? You should go ALOT further.

In my opinion you're making all the same mistakes I made when I started working on social applications. You had a idea first and are now trying to make it viral. Thats the wrong order. You need to get all your viral channels defined and working and only then are you allowed to have an idea :)

I just wanted to reiterate that this is GOOD advice. Design your product to fit the viral channels; don't try to fit the viral channels into the product you already have.

Well you can force a app to be viral its just a TON of work. I dont suggest it but it is possible.

Mostly we're just trying to avoid getting too spammy. Maybe we'll just say what the hell and go for it.

ha I never bought into that whole "invites are spam" bit. Generally people like apps and invites. But its hard to believe that because the minority is very vocal.

If you wanna chat over email I wouldn't mind sharing some tips.

Invites are not spam by themselves, but they're abused by many apps in a way that makes them spam. And you're very wrong if you think the silent majority enjoyed the FB spam fest a while back.

Abusing invites with more "viral channels" will only get the app into a lower invite threshold. FWIW I think a free TV is a pretty good incentive and will have people choosing the friends most likely to use the app. I do agree on promoting more the contest and the free tv thing, people tend to not read anything without flashy colors and big fonts.

sure. themaroon on gmail.

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