Don't get it twisted, i opened this thread but i'm not the original poster of the content in the thread. It just happened that i saw something interesting on the internet and i thought you might like it too.
I visited Seun's blog yesterday, a guy asked him an interesting question.
"I'd like to know how you solve the 'chicken and egg' problem and succeed with Nairaland. Network like Nairaland, FB, Twitter, are only valuable when there is a community on it. Therefore, nobody wants to join, unless there's already a bunch of users. So how did you gain traction"

That's such an interesting question, but what is more interesting is that Seun replied the interesting question in an interesting way.
Here's Seun's reply:
"...To get a social network going, you just have to BRIBE or BEG people to join your social network until it's big enough to sustain itself. If you're evil, TRICKING or FORCING them also works:
*In the social network, Mark Zuckerberg boostrapped social network by hacking into student record and creating account for students without their consent, effectively FORCING them to join.
*Some dating site solve the chicken and egg problem by paying a bunch of beautiful female to join the site and participate. The models attracts a lot of men to join the site. (a form of TRICKERY, really) and this attrats more men.
*With Twitter and Quora, employees of the company were the first to start using the site heavily, then their friends and families, then attention seekers, geeks and celebrities then regular people. In effect, Twitter and Quora employees were initially PAID not to just develop the respective site but to use them and post on them regularly.

Until your social network takes off, You'll just have to bribe or beg people to join and participate, i did that"

http://www.seunosewa.com/2012/03/social-network-chicken-and-egg-problem.html?m=1
cc: lalasticlala

Nice move