

If I were starting out now (in startup land), I would clone threewords.me  - tchae
http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2011/02/if-i-were-starting-out-i-would-clone-threewordsme.html

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jayzee
Kinda huge assumption that you are going to go viral. Mark himself said in
some earlier thread that he has been trying many things for many years and
this was the one that took off.

Bottom-line is that you can predict what would go viral as much as you can
predict what would be fashionable. Not that much.

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epi0Bauqu
You don't have to predict. That's why you clone :)

~~~
abstractbill
Some things seem like they're a one-shot though, e.g. the Million Dollar Home
Page.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
But this doesn't seem like one of them IMHO.

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markbao
Good idea. I'm on it.

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epi0Bauqu
Are you for real?

~~~
guynamedloren
I'm guessing you caught that sarcasm, but for anybody who is unaware - he's
the one who made threewords.me

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Oh, I caught it, but it is still a valid question :)

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makeee
Somewhat related question:

If a viral project takes off and a month later 95% of your traffic has died
off, but you find yourself with 10 million email addresses (signups), is it
ethical or even legal to promote a completely unrelated project by emailing
everyone?

I'm sure you could word it in a way that doesn't seem too spammy ("Thanks for
checking out xxxx, try our new project: yyyyy").

I'm in this situation.. I've held off so far, as tempting as it is, because I
hate spam myself..

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prawn
Can you update your original project with something worth mailing people
about, then include in its footer and in the footer of the mail-out, something
along the lines of:

"The Makeee network includes OriginalProject.com and the all new
NewProject.com (has to be seen to be believed!)."

Or:

"PS. If you've got time, please check out my latest project - I'd really
appreciate your feedback."

Or, perhaps a little spammy, do a joint mail-out for two projects in one
newsletter?

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zachallaun
First, it's fun. I can't argue that that may be the case.

Second, you'll learn a ton by working with millions of users. This is
predicated on the huge assumption that your viral platform attracts millions
of users, and that a large number of these (assuming every new internet
entrepreneur is doing one...) are sustainable.

Third, it will pay off. Mark's pay-off, I'm sure, was more than he initially
envisioned. That amount, to my knowledge, however, remains undisclosed. I
don't believe enough evidence exists to assure such a payoff and create such
confidence.

Fourth, you can use the user base to launch another startup. Sure, 1% of ~10M
users is cool. But that, again, rests on the assumption that you can build up
that base of 10M users.

I realize that this formula may have worked, and that value could likely be
created from cloning it. Cloning just _may_ work. I can't shake off the
feeling, though, that a bit of misinformation is being spread here.

[edit for clarification]: Of course, both the author's post and my response is
solely opinion, which makes my use of the word misinformation, well,
misinformation. What I mean to say is that I can't help but draw comparisons
to "get rich quick" schemes, where opinion was packaged in such a way that
people _took_ it as fact.

~~~
StavrosK
> Sure, 1% of ~10M users is cool. But that, again, rests on the assumption
> that you can build up that base of 10M users.

Also, he forgets that there are numbers less than 1%.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
1% wasn't chosen out of a hat. I see it in real (startup) life a lot.

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tchae
1) although you can hope for it, you can't guarantee something will become
viral. threewords.me could have just as easily been another "project" had it
been pushed out at the wrong time, sent to the wrong people, etc. etc. there's
a lot of luck involved. i'm glad it took off the way it did. Mark made sure he
would maximize the viral potential by having it easily shareable, etc, but
that alone didn't make it viral.

2) i'm just jealous that he got real time experience in learning to scale his
servers to support the crazy growth in users. not many people in the world
have experienced viral growth with their webapps or startups. so congrats to
Mark.

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mkramlich
it's on now, baby: fourwords.me

(fivewords.me, sixwordsme.com.au, etc.)

~~~
derrida
Cool, and then when the enumerable infinity of naturals is registered, let's
go transcendental.

