Ask HN: How to beat the chicken egg situation with user-content driven website?

Posted by dzlobin on Tuesday February 16, 2010 @01:39PM
from the ask-hn dept.

We’re working on capitalizing on craigslist’s weaknesses, and while we have a good grasp on what we’re doing; we aren’t sure how to attract users to a fresh classifieds website. Users tend to leave when they see a website without much there, and obviously new ads won’t list themselves. How can we go about creating real incentive for sticking around when there are still not many listings?

( 6 comments | 4 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: How to beat the chicken egg situation with user-c... by gkoberger on Tuesday February 16, 2010 @01:50PM (#1129437)

You won't make any friends at craigslist (in fact, they'll probably block you), however you could try "importing" craigslist ads (of course, credit and link properly). I don't know if I'd suggest it, but it's a route you could consider. The founder of Lyrics Wiki ( http://lyrics.wikia.com/ ) indexed other lyrics sites, and eventually was bought by Wikia.

Also, look at a few of the paid craigslist alternatives- they might be willing to give you listings if you send traffic their way.

I asked this same question to Jimmy Whales a few months ago. Wikipedia started as a paid service, where professionals were paid for their work. It never got big, so they changed their business model. For them, the already-made articles were enough of a jumping point.

Side note: craigslist already has many, many more-featured competitors. Do you have a theory as to why craigslist is still the most popular software? Make sure you do before you bother creating a craigslist competitor.

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Re:Ask HN: How to beat the chicken egg situation with user-c... by dzlobin on Tuesday February 16, 2010 @01:54PM (#1129448)

thanks for the input! I think we wouldn't want to link to craigslist ads, or any other craigslist-esque websites, because we are trying to fundamentally change the way ads are served; rather than aggregate more listings.

This is why we're not too worried about the (mostly really bad) more-featured craigslist-clones because we're not in it to tack-on extra unnecessary features.

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Re:Ask HN: How to beat the chicken egg situation with user-c... by mrphoebs on Tuesday February 16, 2010 @02:10PM (#1129506)

You need to seed content first. That's how reddit got started with the founders submitting stories under different user-names. Take offline ads(news papers) and list them online (throw in some OCR software like ABBY to scale it). It should get you started.

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Re:Ask HN: How to beat the chicken egg situation with user-c... by mrduncan on Tuesday February 16, 2010 @02:02PM (#1129468)

It might not be helpful advice in your specific case (or that of craigslist type sites), but make it useful even if there aren't any other users. If I remember correctly this is the advice I've always seen from the Reddits on how to solve the problem.

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Re:Ask HN: How to beat the chicken egg situation with user-c... by imok20 on Tuesday February 16, 2010 @02:05PM (#1129488)

The trouble with that is that the sole purpose of our product is to facilitate connections between people selling or offering goods and services. Without people and the stuff they want to sell, we've got nothing.

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Re:Ask HN: How to beat the chicken egg situation with user-c... by minalecs on Tuesday February 16, 2010 @01:45PM (#1129424)

you can pay users, or offer incentives give aways or prizes. If they like the site, they will stick around.

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