

Ask HN: Where were popular sites like Tinder first announced? - babablacksheep

Using Tinder as an example. Given a hugely popular site like Tinder there had to be a point at which it was first announced to the public in a forum similar to this (except maybe not this tech crowd). How did the public first hear about it? What was the point at which it went hugely popular? Was that day 1? I am not so much interested in Tinder, but more any popular site?
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bramgg
Tinder isn't a site, it's an app. They got their early users by visiting
college campuses and showing kids how easily it can get them laid. The full
story is a great read: [https://medium.com/message/how-tinder-co-founder-
whitney-wol...](https://medium.com/message/how-tinder-co-founder-whitney-
wolfe-hacked-metcalfes-law-f607dddbde66)

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MichaelCrawford
Hey that's a great idea.

My App isn't likely to help anyone score, but it would make good demo for
computer science students.

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markcrazyhorse
I'm not too sure but flappy bird the game only got successful overnight
because someone hated how crap it was and posted it onto Buzzfeed. Then it
went viral.

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wallflower
TouchArcade was the first mainstream venue to report on it.

Then, eventually, PewDiePie, the #1 Youtube star by views, took it to to the
exosphere.

[http://www.appfreak.net/deconstructing-incredible-success-
fl...](http://www.appfreak.net/deconstructing-incredible-success-flappy-bird/)

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MichaelCrawford
I have a whole bunch of content on just one site that I want to promote, but I
don't want to spam. I've posted a few of the links here at HN, but I don't
want to wear out my welcome.

Sometimes I can find good places to post my links by using web search, but
it's quite a lot of time and effort. There's no real way to know ahead of time
how many clicks I'll get, or whether I'll get any backlinks. I've had lots of
clicks from comments posted to what I thought were really obscure, low-traffic
sites, I expect because the people who frequent those sites, like to click
links more than, say, Reddit or Facebook users.

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markcrazyhorse
There are also places like reddit that has a subreddit for basically
everything.

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wallflower
"After I sent out that first email, I went rollerblading around a big office
park where Tellme was based. I went up to a random guy and said, “Hey man,
have you checked out hotornot.com yet?” He said, “No, what’s that?” I said,
“Dude, just go check it out!” Then I went home and watched our logs for Tellme
and saw a hit come in 10 minutes later, and then more hits kept coming from
different people within Tellme.”

-James Hong, cofounder, HOTorNOT

From "Founders at Work"

