No one wants to join a community site with no members, so what do you do to make it more attractive to new users when you"re building from the ground up? Simple, do what the founders of reddit did: fake it.
According to co-founder Steve Huffman, the early days of reddit were defined by fast growth thanks to fake accounts set up by none other than Huffman himself and Alexis Ohanian, the other co-founder. “That did two things,” Huffman said in a video for the educational site Udacity. “It set the tone... and it made the site feel alive.” That"s right – you have the founders of reddit themselves to thank for the quirky, rebellious, and sometimes just plain weird spirit that defines the most powerful site on the internet.
Of course, this is made all the more ironic by the fact that reddit recently cracked down on websites trying to game their way into the site"s top links. But since it"s not going on any more, we"ll give "em a pass on this one; after all, it was all part of making a new product attractive, right? Check out Huffman"s video below, it"s pretty interesting. Oh, and don"t forget to let us know what you think, either.
Source: Ars Technica | YouTube