Re:Ask HN: How do you get people to use your product when yo...
by ufmace on Sunday October 02, 2016 @07:07PM
(#12624746)
+1 to fake as in completely made up being a terrible idea. It might be a good idea to manually enter content you got in other ways, though. Like flip through other job listing sites, and copy some over to yours manually, or call up the companies and ask them if it's okay if you enter the info for their position on your site yourself. Then find freelancers either online or in person and do the same thing - copy their info over to your site, ask them if it's okay to do it, or meet them in person somewhere and do it for them. You'll have to be careful to not "spam" either side with too much content that they won't be interested in, or they'll all just block you. But it could make it appear that there's more activity on your site than there really is, which may make people who find it more organically more willing to at least try it.
In reddit's case they were providing real content, just created by them. In this case the content is completely fake.
I also think this would be harmful to the business. I have very few interactions with a service before I make a judgement on them, if most of my interactions go nowhere (as would be the case if they are fake) I would stop using the service.
However if the service was just slow I would be likely to still use it, just check it less frequently.
Of course one viable way of adding content would be to repost content from other sites - with suitable indications of course.