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Ways to gain traction in the consumer market...

1. Use copyrighted content that is highly sought after. 2. Buy traffic, make it look like ur site is exploding 3. With suspect growth sign partnerships w/copyright

Worked well for youtube though don't think they had to buy traffic 1 and 3 worked really well for them.

Note: not trying to be negative here, just reviewing/studying the rise of various start-ups. How they got to be successful!

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Exactly the same way I have felt about both Scribd and Justin.tv.

Here is another "algorithm" to gain traction, last seen at Ning: 1) allow adult content - in their case adult oriented social networks 2) gain traction, 3) jettison the adult content to clean up your image.

At least this second algorithm has no legal issues, but third party copyrighted content, I have serious legal/ethical issues with.

I have never understood why Y Combinator never saw that as a problem.

Because it worked for Youtube and some others and it's the way to success and a sale. Just following what others have done - thank god for the DMCA!

Why do you think Justin.tv is buying traffic? It's patently false, so I'm curious where you'd get the impression from.

Sorry emmett I was not saying #2 applied to Justin.tv

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