
How I Got My First 1000 Users in 1 Day - drum
http://popcornryan.tumblr.com/post/65640245447/how-i-got-my-first-1000-users-in-1-day
======
vineetch
To get more users, have you tried approaching bloggers in different niches
with different article ideas? The use cases for your app are different for
different sets of people. Just write a one paragraph abstract about your app
and email bloggers and editors to see if they'll cover your just released app.

Some headline and abstract ideas when you approach bloggers:

1) Tech/Business -- Popcorn: The hot new app to network at tech conferences

2) Student Websites/Newspapers -- The messaging app you need when a zombie
apocalypse happens at SDSU (insert campus here)

3) Dating Blogs -- The newest app for singles: Popcorn lets you chat with
others in high density bar areas

4) General -- When disasters strike, Popcorn lets you talk to others in your
vicinity

5) Social media bloggers -- What are young teens using if not Facebook? Apps
like Popcorn: hyper-local and addictive

6) Music -- Perfect for Coachella and SXSW: Popcorn lets you chat with others
at music festivals

7) City Websites/Local -- New app "Popcorn" lets neighbors stay connected on
what's happening on the block

8) Gaming -- Popcorn, the app you need to coordinate your next LAN party

If you get a bunch of these articles and blog posts up in the next week or
two, it can help push that 1,000 number up higher.

~~~
drum
DUUUUDE! my mind just got blown. I haven't tried this. Great idea. And no way,
you even wrote the headlines?!

> 2) Student Websites/Newspapers -- The messaging app you need when a zombie
> apocalypse happens at SDSU (insert campus here)

hahaha that would be a hit.

~~~
hobs
This advice is posted to HN quite a bit, this is the same reason websites have
press kits available. Long story short, journalists are lazy, just like the
rest of us, and they have deadlines, just like the rest of us. Exploit them to
your advantage and help them out at the same time, and if you are especially
different, they will love to be the first to report.

Speaking of that, be careful about who you send what when, a lot of people
will break your story before you officially release something just to say they
were first, and then your site will be offline and all that traffic will be
for naught.

------
james33
I think you need a 5th takeaway: write a follow-up blog post about how your HN
post got you 1000 users, subsequently getting you another 1000 users that
missed the post the day before.

~~~
jpittman
how about a 6th takeaway in a follow up, in which he discusses retention of
these initial 1000 users? I think it's great he was able to obtain those
numbers early but I think those users are a bit ephemeral.

~~~
drum
yea that would be a good post... ill see what i can do!

~~~
nhatty
yea it have :)

------
algoshift
I've learned Facebook and LinkedIn can produce really disappointing results.

Over the last couple of weeks we've been pushing hard to develop awareness for
a worthy cause (special needs education tools). Details here:

[http://www.tommyteaches.com/special-
education.php](http://www.tommyteaches.com/special-education.php)

(Yes, taking the opportunity to also get a little attention on HN. Sorry, this
is important.)

Analytics tells us that LinkedIn, in particular didn't have good engagement. A
few strategic posts on CraigsList probably did ten times better LinkedIn.

The best results we got have been due to friends, family, neighbors and local
teachers making a push to reach to their immediate connections (their friends,
family and co-workers) to have them engage. Also some blogs produced results
here and there.

In general terms building an audience for just about anything on the internet
is really hard these days. Luck can be a factor, but more and more it seems to
require a lot of hard work and "street smarts". For example, I contacted every
host at a local TV station with slightly different versions of the same story
in order to see if anyone would be interested. Call it A/B testing. One was,
and that helped a bit (just a bit).

Good luck with your app. It looks interesting.

~~~
e12e
> I've learned Facebook and LinkedIn can produce really disappointing results.

(...)

> The best results we got have been due to friends, family, neighbors and
> local teachers making a push to reach to their immediate connections (their
> friends, family and co-workers) to have them engage.

Do you mean facebook ads in your first use of Facebook? Because I would think
"organic" use of Facebook would be a contributing factor to "reach ...
immediate connections"?

I've never quite understood the idea of Facebook "ads". If you want to do
"viral" marketing -- let your product/cause spread via social media via actual
human connections. If you want to do advertising, do advertising.

~~~
algoshift
Reaching a mass of people via Facebook is, to some degree, relatively easy. If
you have 50 to 100 people you can reach directly and they, in turn, reach out
to their direct connections you'll "touch" a pile of people quickly.

However, from that to getting people to take action --be it install and app,
vote for a cause, visit a website-- that's an entirely different matter.

In our case one of the things we came across is a demographic that simply does
not use Facebook. Older parents of the very kids we are trying to help.

The next issue was triggered by a dialog that pops-up when you click on the
vote button. Facebook tells you that you are about to share your profile and
your friends list. Of course a lot of people recoiled at that immediately. The
last thing parents of children with special needs want to do is open the doors
to their facebook account. I get it. I absolutely do. We probably lost
hundreds of potential supporters this way. It is perfectly understandable. I
don't understand why facebook would not have the option to be able to simply
log in or vote on something as a means of identifying yourself yet without
granting access to your life (or projecting the fear of this happening).

I suppose the efficacy of trying to build an audience through facebook depends
on your demographic. If your audience lives on facebook it is probably a great
channel. If you audience does not or if they are concerned about their privacy
there could be issues.

------
Cogito
Please add push notifications?

If you log in, and no one is around, the app gets closed pretty quickly. I
have checked back multiple times, and always seem to miss everyone chatting. I
would love to know if someone close by is online or chatting, so that I don't
have to sit there hoping someone sees my tepid 'Hello?'.

I don't know if push notifications are the correct answer, but letting me know
that there was activity that I missed, after my last post, would be a good
start. Letting me know if other people are active in my region would be nice,
but it's mostly that I don't want to have a conversation with myself.

I would love to know if other people are chatting, because I want to join in.

In any case, thanks for the app, have you got a public issue tracker, or
anything similar?

~~~
drum
Yes, you're absolutely right. I was kickin myself all day yesterday because
push notifications weren't working. I couldnt figure out why but my guess was
it had to do with the provisioning profile. i resubmitted late last night, and
requested expedited review. hopefully itll be out in the next few days. either
way, thanks for the constructive feedback!

~~~
Cogito
How did you implement it?

I was writing that comment, and kept thinking of the possible annoying
implementations. For example, I probably don't want a notification every
single time someone within 1 mile sends a message.

Some seemingly sane ideas off the top of my head, which I think would be
useful and not too annoying:

* A timeout, where I get a notification if there is a new message, after a period where no messages were sent near me

* Notification if I send a message with no reply, close the app, and then someone replies

* Notification if there is a particularly active conversation around me

------
qzervaas
I like the app idea, but not a huge fan of your methods of attracting users.
Because this is a highly localized app, I think the key takeaway is that you
need to really push a single (or multiple) locations at once, rather than
"everywhere" at once.

The app will do far better with 1000 users in one location than 1 user in each
of 1000 locations.

Also, could you onboard users with no registration required to get them using
it, then ask them to register if they want to use across multiple devices /
retrieve their login?

~~~
meowface
Absolutely. This app is going to completely rely on network effects. Just like
Facebook, once there are a few area "spheres" with a lot of active and
concurrent users, this can start to take off.

I predict this may end up being the next big Snapchat-like app within a year.
I may be totally wrong, and/or I may just be biased because I've always wanted
an app like this (in part because I always enjoyed the local small-region
chatting in MMO games, and this is the same thing applied to real life), but I
think this has a ton of potential.

Right now it needs to be aggressively marketed and spread around.

------
benp84
Congrats on the success! I'm curious: the condition of <1 mile proximity isn't
transitive, so wouldn't users be seeing only one half of a lot of
conversations? Like if A was close to B, B was close to C, but A wasn't close
to C, then A would only see what B says to C but not what C says back. Or have
you divided up space into fixed cells roughly one mile wide to prevent this?

~~~
drum
This was probably my most embarrassing oversight. Your first point is the way
it's working. I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to make that work
without segmenting the map into fixed cells... any thoughts?

~~~
dugmartin
You should just make the text from 1 to 2 miles show at 50% alpha, and the 25%
alpha from 2 to 3 miles.

~~~
meowface
Does this really solve the problem though? What happens if someone 3 miles
away is talking to someone who's 1 mile away from themselves, but 4 miles away
from you? Then you'd see the transparent text of them talking to some person
you can't see messages from, yet also see transparent text of them responding
to people you can see messages from.

I personally don't see how you could completely avoid this without some kind
of fixed regions, unless you required people to do some kind of an "@user
Hey..." for every message so that you would know if you share the same sphere
with the destination user. This makes it more tedious and less fun, though,
plus it takes away the whole idea of multicasting.

~~~
nmridul
That is how it is working in real life. You can hear the person closer to you
speaking, but not the one farther

------
jsnk
I have a side project (dmtri.com). It lacks active users right now. I don't
mind not having too many registered users as the website doesn't require you
to sign up. I just wish that people would visit more and write more. Obviously
the problem is that there isn't much going on actively on the site.

However, I detest the thought of spamming every facebook groups and such. I
tried organically growing by writing really good content
([http://dmtri.com/posts/28/alexis_ohanian_-_%22i_don%27t_regr...](http://dmtri.com/posts/28/alexis_ohanian_-_%22i_don%27t_regret_selling_reddit)),
but that in itself is a problem because I have to get visitors for that.

I worked hard on the project but I feel a bit discouraged by lack of interest
so far.

~~~
drum
if you believe in your product and think there's a need than why would you
consider it spam?

~~~
jff
I would report your facebook posts as abuse if I saw them on my newsfeed, most
likely. "I joined a bunch of groups so I could advertise to them." Scummy.

~~~
jcutrell
Not all advertisement is scummy.

You could easily change the tone here. "I joined a bunch of very specific
types of groups so I could manually write a post that tells them about a free
app that I built for their demographic."

I felt the "scum" right away, but then I thought about the source of the
feeling. Scummy is when you write bait. Telling people about your app -
sometimes that requires a door to door cold call.

I think this app deserved to be shared with that group, and it's particularly
un-scummy considering the fact that it's brand new, free, and isn't trying to
mine for email addys.

~~~
drum
thank you! took the words right out of my mouth

------
karangoeluw
I feel like what you did might be considered spam - posting on FB groups, and
reposting on HN. It's not adding any value to the community. But hey, what
works, works.

~~~
drum
there are ways of posting tactfully. i believe in the app thus i think it's
useful for those students. i dont continuously post over and over, so far,
only once per page. i have students liking and commenting, even friending me
telling me they like the app.

~~~
prawn
What if there were 1,000 developers with similar apps, each who thought their
offering could be useful for the students in question? Even just one post from
each of them would likely flood a community.

If you post like that in a community of mine, I generally delete your post and
blacklist your link preventing people from discussing it even if they discover
it organically. There is just too much spam coming through to give benefit of
the doubt.

If you want to announce something in someone else's community, I think fairer
and more polite behaviour is to speak with an owner/moderator about what they
think is fair - it might be that they allow such posts or they ask that you
advertise, etc.

------
shawnreilly
Great Article, thank you for sharing. It's interesting to follow a Product
Launch and see what works / what doesn't work. I like how you've integrated a
specific UX into the Product. Right now the Signup is probably one of the most
important aspects to focus on (as you onboard Users). Choosing to skip E-mails
(and E-mail verification) for a faster signup lowers the entry point barrier
and makes the UX more enjoyable. This is something I'm currently working on
with my App (the initial Signup Process). I've performed some customer
validation and the results were in line with my assumptions. The preferred
experience seems to be minimal time investment, and minimal effort. Following
this train of thought, here are few basic options:

1\. User manually inputs an E-mail Address and Password (commonly w/ E-mail
Verification) 2\. User manually inputs a Username/Password (less to type, no
Verification needed) 3\. User taps twice and uses Social Media Integration
(example, Facebook Login)

Of course each of these has Pro's and Cons. I will follow Popcorn and see how
it works with the second option. I'm leaning towards the third option (minimal
time investment), but I'm concerned about perceptions of the associated Social
Network(s) and how that might impact the User's desire to create an account.
For example, if a certain Network is "not cool" with the younger generation,
and you present the "not cool" Network as the Logon method, would that make
the App also "not cool"?

~~~
drum
You need to really think about 3. Asking someone to sign in using facebook or
twitter is much more than the physical action of tapping twice. you're asking
for something emotional, their personal data. It would help others and myself
if you posted what your app does. i would only use those as a form of login
signup if your app absolutely depends on it - Tinder is a great example of
this.

~~~
shawnreilly
I completely agree. Using option 3 has its own set of con's, and this is one
of them. Many Users have been misused/tricked in the past and don't like the
idea of associating a new (aka unknown) App with their Social Media Accounts.
For all they know the App will steal their data and spam their friends. This
is in line with some of the feedback I get when validating with potential
customers.

You may have hit a sweet spot there with option 2. Keep us updated! An
interesting Metric would be comparing the Bounce Rate between these options
above (ala A/B Testing).

------
hansy
There's some good advice here, but a majority of users came from HN, right?

So the takeaway is pray your story makes it to HN's front page.

Snarkiness aside, congrats on the launch!

~~~
nthitz
His second main takeaway:

> If your post doesn’t gain traction on Hacker News initially, delete it and
> try posting another day. This probably holds true for sites like Reddit as
> well.

Which makes me a little uneasy..

~~~
drum
why?

~~~
Namrog84
It's promoting repeated posting of the same article in attempts to get lucky.
It borders in the grey area of spam.

Spam works. But it's still spam.

~~~
avalaunch
As the author notes, the fact that he finally did get a bunch of upvotes sort
of proves that his posting wasn't spam to begin with. It was relevant to the
community. What it shows more than anything else is that the system for
achieving the coveted front page status is broken. I'm not sure what a good
solution would be though.

~~~
weavie
It does show the importance of choosing a good title to attract enough
attention to get to the front page. This is textbook copy writing.

------
pieterhg
FYI, I can't find Popcorn if I search for Popcorn in the App Store. I am able
to find it if I search for Popcorn Messaging. I can just imagine many more
people will find it if you'd call it Popcorn Chat.

------
QuasiAlon
Nice post and always exciting to get a good start going. What I'm really
interested in is the geographical dispersion of those 1,000 users (and however
many you have now), how many conversations where actually formed, and the
retention. I guess people fire up an app just after installing it, wanting to
take it for a spin, and if they can't form even one conversation since
nobody's around them, it would greatly affect retention.

An interesting metric would be 'conversations per day' and if technically
possible 'potential conversations per day', that is to say how many pairs of
people with the app running where in 1 mile proximity to one another.

Also, it would be interesting to see whether users take the conversation
elsewhere (facebook, twitter, whatsapp), at what stage (as one is leaving the
location or before that), and if they do - how does it affect their app usage.
Does it make them use the app more (for example, to seek more connections and
friends now that they see it's effective for meeting new people), or less
(they took the conversation elsewhere and their social needs were met for
now).

Just my $0.02. Hope to see an Android version soon to test if myself! Good
luck!

------
coffeecheque
It's an interesting app, and a really cool idea.

However, should you be displaying the location of your users on a Google Map
via your publicly accessible backend website?

I'm happy for location to be sent to the server for working out where I am.
I'm less happy for it to popup where everyone can access it.

------
rurounijones
Interesting that the "link-baity" title worked much better on HN.

(I consider any title which tells me what X "needs" or why / how X "must" do
something to be link-bait)

------
oneeyedpigeon
I think I totally misread this title as "how I got my first 1000 users - in
one day" rather than, what I think it means, which is "how I got my first
1000-users-in-1-day"! Still, useful tips, and you obviously have a lot of
energy when it comes to getting the word out, which can only be admired.

~~~
drum
thanks! I'm trying to hustle as hard as I can right now.

------
dopamean
About 14 years ago I used a chat client called popcorn that ran on local
networks while I was at boarding school. It allowed us to chat after hours
when outside internet access was cut off (around 10pm). Now I cant find any
reference to it. Anyone else here heard of it?

------
leviathan
How were you able to get Apple to accept the app when it's locked by a login
screen? I suffered with 2 different apps that had been rejected because they
required the user to register/login before they can use the app.

~~~
drum
you can add a test login username and password in the meta data

~~~
leviathan
It's not about that. They say you cannot require the user to share personal
info before using your app. Maybe it's because you are registering with a
username and not an email.

------
waylandsmithers
Congrats-- this app looks pretty cool.

I could definitely see this being useful/entertaining at a sporting event in a
"join the conversation" kind of way. Everyone plays with their smartphone
during breaks in the action anyway.

------
goshx
Wow! Congrats on the app and I am really enjoying all the advices people are
giving here. A lot of good stuff in the comments.

ps: I am still reading them with the voice of Morgan Freeman, though (maybe
that is why they seem so inspiring?)

------
brickmort
'x more users needed to unlock this area: invite users'

that is goddamn brilliant.

------
zmansiv
I think having a list of usernames that match the input and have spoken
recently when you type @ and then some letters would be a useful feature.
Pretty minor, but just throwing that out there.

------
lyricalpolymath
Nice Idea, localized networks are trending fast. Do you remember what day of
the week and at what time you posted the successful HN post? what about those
that didn't work?

~~~
drum
It was wednesday at around 11 AM PST. I'm pretty sure the other times were
closer to mid-day like 12 - 2. Although this post was posted mid-day as well,
however on Thursday and it seemed to do really well.

~~~
lyricalpolymath
thanks! A few days ago there was another article suggesting that the best time
to post was around 19h in the evening (GMT) which is consistent with what you
say of 11-12 AM PST. The only difference was the day, he was posting on sunday
I believe.

what day of the week were the 2 failed attempts posted on?

I'm trying to sense the pulse of the HN crowd, to see when we all slack off
the most ;)

------
udkl
So basically, the conversion to the simple splash screen of the app did not
work as expected at launch.

It's good copy writing and the corresponding HN traffic that got the users.

------
Kiro
Wouldn't that kind of Facebook spamming get you banned?

------
gabemart
> I deleted the post before it got locked in so that I could repost with the
> same link another day.

Is this generally OK to do, within reason?

------
Kiro
Why was the title changed from "Show HN: The App Every College Dorm Needs
(appsto.re)" to the one in the picture?

~~~
drum
HN changed it back to my original title once it detected I had posted before.

------
CalinBalauru
You could do User.count no point to do User.all.count unpess you want a hole
bunch of user objects build.

------
HipstaJules
If you post something in the chat with the '&' character it's not displayed
right.

------
sloanesturz
Users.all.count made me cringe.

~~~
drum
what would you use ?

~~~
chaz
In Rails 4, User.count and User.all.count both do the same thing:

    
    
      SELECT COUNT(*) FROM "users"
    

In earlier versions, User.all.count executes:

    
    
      SELECT "users".* FROM "users"
    

because it is pulling back all fields from all users into memory, instead of
just asking the database to check the index for a count.

~~~
meowface
This is an easy mix-up to make considering .length, .count, and .size are all
aliases.

------
sashaeslami
It might be worth pushing this article up on the subreddit for marketing.

~~~
drum
which subreddit? r/technology hasn't been giving me much love

~~~
imt
that's too general. r/apple, r/iphone, r/software are starting points and a
lot more specific. If you plan on developing an Android version, then
r/Android, r/androidapps

~~~
drum
nice! ok , ill try those then

------
ilitirit
Out of curiousity, why would people choose this instead of WeChat?

www.wechat.com

------
tmirani
Nice little write up, looks like this could get huge!

------
natmaster
Android version coming? I'd like to be a user.

~~~
drum
working on it! sometime soon

------
sodafountan
Congrats! Keep hustling

~~~
drum
cant stop, wont stop

------
cmbaus
Interesting idea.

