A few random thoughts on building communities

Re:A few random thoughts on building communities by petercooper on Saturday September 04, 2010 @07:32PM (#1663657)

I got friends and colleagues to join up and pestered the heck out of most of them until the site became sticky enough that they came back (to my delight) on their own volition. I only have ever had one account :)

This sounds like the bowling pin technique (or whatever it's called) that was described on HN a few weeks ago. Where you start with a very small community that will talk to each other anyway and then grow at a trickle to keep the overall velocity up. In this way, your invite only tactic seems to have paid dividends vs having 10,000 people hit on day one and finding nothing going on.

Update: Thanks for find it where that "bowling pin" thing was, a clicky link: http://cdixon.org/2010/08/21/the-bowling-pin-strategy/

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Re:A few random thoughts on building communities by kylebragger on Saturday September 04, 2010 @07:34PM (#1663661)

Haven't heard of that one, I'll check it out though. Catchy name, too. And yes -- I think you're spot on here. It's gotten a lot of flak for being invite only but I really believe in the model (as long as you can stay on the right side of the elitism line).

[edit] Just checked it out; was a post from Chris Dixon. totally spot on. Thank you sir.

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