
1997 Paper: The special catalyst for Hotmail's torrid growth is called "Viral Marketing" - zaidf
http://www.dfj.com/cgi-bin/artman/publish/steve_tim_may97.shtml
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zaidf
Key from the article:

"In our next meeting, Tim Draper suggested that they should append an
advertising message to every outbound email: "P.S. Get your free email at
Hotmail. It was very contentious at the time. Would users balk at having this
automatic addition to the content of their private messages?"

For someone who first touched the Internet in 1997, it is very interesting to
have actually seen the evolution of viral marketing over 10 years.

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pg
This must be what Hotmail founder Sabeer Bhatia meant when he complained in
_Founders at Work_ that DFJ had claimed they'd invented his idea.

