I got this interesting question in my inbox
recently:




Hey Seun,
You don't know me. I'm just a fan of
yours. I'd like to know how you solved the
"chicken and egg" problem and succeed
with nairaland. Networks like nairaland,
fb, twitter are only valuable when there's
a community on it. Therefore nobody
wants to join, unless there are already a
bunch of users. So how did you gain
traction?




So, you want to start a poultry farm. You need
eggs to make chickens, but you need chickens to
lay eggs, so what do you do? How do you solve
this problem? Simple:




1. Buy lots of chickens. The chickens will lay
eggs, which will develop into new chickens.




2. Buy lot of fertilized eggs and incubate them.
They will develop into egg-laying chickens.
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, forcing or tricking them to join also works:




* In 'The Social Network' Mark
Zuckerberg bootstrapped a social
network by hacking into student
records and creating accounts for
students without their consent,
effectively forcing them to join.


.

* Some dating sites solve the chicken
and egg problem by paying a bunch of
beautiful female models to join the site
and participate.The models attract a lot
men to join the site (a form of trickery
really), and this attracts more women.




* With Twitter and Quora, employees of
the company were the first to start
using the sites heavily, then their
friends and family, then attention
seekers, geeks and celebrities, and
finally regular people. In effect, Twitter
and Quora employees were initially paid
not just to develop the respective sites
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.

hmm... Cool

The major secret behind Nairaland's success is the SEO...

interesting

Good day everyone, I am pleading to get your support. I built this online forum called "Every Knows" just like Quora, Every Knows is a Q&A community where people ask a vast number of questions and get amazing answers from our matured and cultured members who specializes in one field or another. I need your support and opinions on what to do more (focus more) and how to make this platform successful and also help in identifying where things got wrong. Visit https://everyknows.com I'm looking forward for a favorable reply. Thanks in advance.

Good day everyone, I am pleading to get your
support.

I built this online forum called "Every Knows" just
like Quora, Every Knows is a Q&A community
where people ask a vast number of questions
and get amazing answers from our matured and
cultured members who specializes in one field or
another.

I need your support and opinions on what to do
more (focus more) and how to make this
platform successful and also help in identifying
where things go wrong.

Visit https://everyknows.com I'm looking forward
for a favorable reply. Thanks in advance.

kennisblog:
Good day everyone, I am pleading to get your
support.

I built this online forum called "Every Knows" just
like Quora, Every Knows is a Q&A community
where people ask a vast number of questions
and get amazing answers from our matured and
cultured members who specializes in one field or
another.

I need your support and opinions on what to do
more (focus more) and how to make this
platform successful and also help in identifying
where things go wrong.

Visit https://everyknows.com I'm looking forward
for a favorable reply. Thanks in advance.

How did you get AdSense for the site.

Love your site, no lies.

fattbabakay:
The major secret behind Nairaland's success is the SEO...

Can you explain more on this.