Today, we are happy to announce that we will be introducing a new Yahoo! logo next month.
Over the past year, thereâs been a renewed sense of purpose and progress at Yahoo!, and we want everything we do to reflect this spirit of innovation. While the...
I have read Traction mistakes by Gabriel Weinberg, who, by the way also started duckduckgo, (- an amazingly simple and sometimes better search engine than google). DDG is really effective for developers and Gabriel Weinberg has a really good set of articles on traction, you can see his book about traction here.
After reading, I wanted to understand  some of the common patterns, in this traction game. The idea is to see how some âsuccessfulâ internet companies got traction. I am not saying that we can replicate anyone else's success, but the intent is to try and observe patterns, wherever possible. Most startups donât fail at building a product. They fail at acquiring customers.
Kickstarter
How did Kickstarter, get traction? Â Well, the founders say âWe asked our friendsâ. That is so profoundly simple.
This is very simple, but I think  you must know that the founders were already working with few media and design companies so when they say friends, their friends wanted some thing like Kickstarter, all along.  This is an important pattern youâll see github also following.
Airbnb
In there own words
We started the company by accident â in 2000. Our rent went up for our San Francisco apartment and we had to figure out a way to bring in some extra income. There was a design conference coming to the city, but hotels were sold out. The size of our apartment could easily fit airbeds on the floor, so we decided to rent them out. We didnât want to post on Craigslist because we felt it was too impersonal. Our entrepreneur instinct said âbuild your own siteâ. So we did. It wasnât much of a site to start out â a couple of pages, and pictures of our apartment. 3 people stayed with us, and we cooked them breakfast each morning. We became friends by the end, and they were grateful to have saved hundreds of dollars on their trip, and connect with actual people. We netted close to $1000!
After that first weekend when we hosted people on our airbeds, we received emails from all around the world asking when we would make the site available in place like Buenos Aires, London, and Japan. At that point we started to brainstorm what a larger, international version of the site would be. That was basically our market research. People told us what they wanted, so we set off to create it for them. Ultimately while solving our own problem, we were solving someone elseâs problem too. We were at a point professionally where we were very ready to pursue our own idea. We were anxious though, like waiting in line for a roller coaster. We didnât know exactly what was ahead, but we knew we were in for a ride.
Mint
There is a rather well answered question on quora, , âHow did Mint acquire 1.5m+ users without a high viral coefficient, scalable SEO strategy, or paid customer acquisition channel?" you can read the answer by Jason Putorti to the above question, but to distill the answers in few points,  here is the gist.
The Product â solved a real problem
Blog / Original Content.
Good, Paid PR
SEO. We had an extensive SEO strategy, and it scaled pretty well. We had a lot of landing pages, content on the blog and marketing sites, and had a very metrics driven approach to all of it. For every popular finance query on Google, we had a page and content for it, and iterated landing pages to optimize conversion.
Content Partnerships.
Distribution Deals
Email
Facebook / Twitter
Michael Arrington, of TC
YoutubeÂ
Youtube was neither first nor best, so how did they acquire users? Well here are few reasons.
Easy and Good name â seriously â a good name is important.
YouTube, always positioned as a content aggregation for the everyone.
YouTubeâs design is simple and easier, from a social content exploration perspective.
YouTube practiced more relaxed content authorization policies for the first few years of its existence, indirectly endorsing the posting of all sorts of content that should perhaps not have been there (network TV, film clips, etc), or at least deserved some additional filtering (adult content, graphic content, etc).
More customization & personalization on Youtube
No ads, in the initial days
YouTube may be a legitimate business now, but its success was solely due to placement of infringing, copy written material being uploaded there.
Google search
How did Google get initial traction?
Google is one of the few companies that won its industry entirely by making a better product. I donât remember Google doing much advertising, and there were certainly big players in the search space already. Then again, Googleâs search wasnât just slightly better, or even 2. better- but easily a 10, improvement over Alta Vista and Yahoo. Then google came up with the pagerank which was the first of itâs kind analytic to decide the weight of the pages.  Another good thing with google was the cost to change, from their competition was almost nil.
AmazonÂ
How did Amazon get initial traction?
Very early on, amazon did a bunch of deals with search engines to advertise to people who were searching for each book they had in stock. It would be an obvious thing to do for a book seller starting out now, but that was before things like Adwords made it easy (and before Google even existed). Because the SEM market wasnât developed they were able to buy traffic and build up their brand at a much lower price than what it would cost today.
It is rumored that in the extremely early days, they made their âvery earlyâ traction happen just by having previously-impossible selection, and then providing extraordinary customer service (if they didnât have a book in stock, theyâd track it down for you). The word-of-mouth pass-along was tremendous. A little later, they invested heavily in securing exclusive portal deals to power the Books (and other) verticals, giving them a head-start on competitors. Discount pricing also helped, with NY Times bestsellers at 30-50. off (discount wars sprung up with Barnes and Noble, further driving PR opportunities).
Pinterest
How did Pinterest grew? Well in a interview, the founders shares about, initial days. Excerpt from his interview with Silbermann.
A Yale grad with no engineering background, Silbermann worked for Google before launching Pinterest with some friends in late 2009. Real-time text feeds were the rage at the time, and some observers felt that an image-based pinboard was doomed to fail. Nine months later, the site still had less than 1000. users. "I think I personally wrote to the first 500. users,â said Silbermann, who also gave the siteâs users his cell phone number and met some of them for coffee. "A lot of people ask, 'Why did you keep  going? Why didnât you bail?ââ he said. âI think the idea of telling people, 'We blew it,â was just too embarrassing.â
Duckduckgo
DuckDuckGo has gotten some success out of reddit ads. Thereâs also lots of other platforms, e.g. Facebook, StumbleUpon, MySpace. Then there are thousands of smaller sites that will take your ads directly. This is how ddg grew.
Github
There is a great speech from Tom Preston-Werner the co-founder and CTO of GitHub and founder of Gravatar on how it all got started form the Startup School 2010.  I am going to para phrase what he said â
He saw that people liked git, but it was pain in ass to use.
He (his team) made git simple, offered as a service
He was part of Ruby user groups where he got his first users/customer
His strategy was simple â Public repos are free, and private are paid.
Public repos are free to give github word of mouth and free marketing
Reddit
Reddit gained traction for three main reasons
Founders had created a âcontroversyâ early on, could have been accidental or by chance, by switching from LISP to Python, very publicly. Which made a lot of people aware of the site
Reddit was from ycombinatorâs first batch and had all the focus and energy of the ycombinator team (as the success of the first yc batch was required to make yc successful), this made a lot of people curious about the project.
Finally fake content - Steve Huffman talks about how in the initial day they made it simple for the founder and reddit team to submit url from fake users.So when others came to the site they could see a lot of content already.
Scoble on how instagram got traction.
The founders werenât scared of letting people try it before launch. They looked at building their company as exactly that. They never really did a big launch. They just kept showing it to people and putting it on their phones and taking feedback. I was at Dogpatch Labs (where they started) for another company and the guy who ran the labs told me âyou gotta meet these guys who are doing this cool photo app.â
They got everyone they talked to be a brand ambassador. This happens when the founders are nice and when the product rocks.
They had an awesome interaction model (er viral loop). I still remember taking my iPhone, shooting a photo outside on the Pier 38 where they launched and having three comments within seconds show up on my photo. That never happened on other photo apps. Got me instantly addicted. Also got me to get other people on the app, because the more they were there the better the app became (thatâs a viral loop).
Early users converted to great app store ratings. The few people who got it before launch became huge advocates and pushed it on blogs and in reviews on app store. Showed it to influencers. I remember seeing a TON of San Francisco influencers like Kevin Rose, Leo Laporte and MG Siegler on the app before I got on or shortly after. These people were key in getting lots of consumer companies to be well known.
  There is a very thin line between following your passion (or harmonious passion) and getting obsessed with it. Harmonious passion fuels creativity and  increased concentration, whereas an obsessively passionate person feels controlled by work and that leads to frequent burn outs. Knowing what you want out of following your passion is the key to try and balance between this harmonious passion and obsessive passion. May be that's why bootstrapping your startup, as long as you can, gives you the power to be in control and can be one of the best decisions you will have made in the long run.
Seems like Android has hit a home run. With widely covered reports and market statistics in 2012 going gung-ho over how Android beat iPhone hands down, looks like Android is set to rule the world. Of course we canât dispute figures now can we? Gartner a top research firm says for the period April-June 2012, Android outsold iOS devices nearly three to one while capturing 64% of the worldwide market share. This just pegs Android as the ultimate platform for smart phones, which currently rule the mobile phone world.
Hereâs another number to think about. Having caught the fancy of people across age groups, there are more than a billion smart phones in use today. Everyday an estimated 1.3million Android devices are activated. Which is a way more than 300,000 baby born world over â daily. Mind boggling numbers isnât it? But it is happening. And it is happening around us.
 So, what is it that makes us believe that Googleâs Android will rule the world? Letâs take a short walk down history to understand Androidâs origin, and its rise to a preferred operating system among mobile device makers and users. Designed primarily for touch screen mobile devices like smart phones and tablets, Android rests on an open source platform. This offered the gadget world its biggest-ever advantage ~ freedom to modify software based on needs and preferences. Coupled with its permissive licensing, Android went on to become a rage among device makers, wireless service providers and developers alike. This challenge thrown by a new playground created a large community of developers who wrote functional enhancement applications for devices, in customized Java scripts. As a result, by October 2012 there were approximately 700,000 apps available for Android, and the estimated number of applications downloaded from Google Play, Android's primary app store, was 25 billion. (Source: Wiki).
Google Play, or Android Market as it was known, is a digital application distribution platform for Android and an online electronics store developed and maintained by Google. The service allows users to browse and download music, magazines, books, movies, television programs, and applications published through Google. Applications like the Apple App Store are available either for free or at a cost. They can be downloaded directly to an Android or Google TV device through the Play Store mobile app, or by deploying the application to a device from the Google Play website.
 These factors boosted the rise of Android especially as the world's most widely used smart phone platform. This success was seamlessly carried forward into other gadgets and electronic devices like televisions, games and digital cameras. How? With its set of star features:
 Low-cost
Easy adoption
Customization power and
Light-weight OS
Thus, Android became a software of choice for technology companies. A definite bang for the buck, Androidâs open nature had not just makers of high tech devices like Samsung and HTC flock around like bees, also further encouraged developers to work on newer features that nudged Android closer to devices which were already running on other operating systems. While Android began its journey to be at the heart of all mobile devices, today it is surely ruling the smart phone segment.
 A quick jump to specifically understand the smart phone segment. Weâre all witnesses to some of the major changes the smart phone world has gone through over the past year. Apple gave up its top spot as a smart phone manufacturer that saw the rise of Samsung, which in turn helped Android catapult to its present numero uno position. From an almost unknown OS, Google was able to make Android a dominant category leader in less than a year from when it hit the market. Today, statistics indicate Google Android smart phones have captured 75% of the market share based on their shipment. This would most definitely keep the rest on their toes to stay in the race.
 To continue with our argument, letâs consider some metrics to measure the success of a smart phone OS platform.
Price point is a differentiator parameter. Android over iOS is cheaper to boot. The switch to or run for Android is not only because of a better quality product, but also because customers can afford it at a fraction of the cost of Apple. The reason: Android OS comes to phone manufacturers like HTC or Samsung for free. The pairing with a popular OS does create a pricing advantage. But letâs also be aware that low pricing has most definitely cost phone manufacturers a lot, which they seem fine carrying on for now. With cheaper handsets making a flurry into the market, a bountiful pairing with superior technology at a reasonable price sure gives Google a convincing advantage.
Mobile app downloads is another metric point for a mobile platform. A forecast by ABI Research positions Android as a clear winner in 2013. The firm anticipates 58% smart phone app downloads this year will be Android apps, while iOS will come in at just 33%. But these numbers are restricted to smart phones and look very different if tablet app downloads are included. Irrespective of the source, at present the going is strong for Android in the overall smart phone market and predictions say this trend will continue world over for a while longer.
Next up on our list â competition. While Android and iOS have matured as competitors and seem like the only ones around, the contrast though is that there are two remaining competitors: Microsoft's Windows Phone and Research in Motion's (RIM) BlackBerry. Where are these confused competitors? Microsoft formally unveiled Windows Phone 8 in late October 2012. Business benefit: addressed key missing capabilities such as security and management that have kept Windows Phone out of most businesses. RIM promises to ship BlackBerry 10 by April 2013. But this is to be believed when it happens, as the OS has faltered many-a-time.
As the scene unfolds now, though Windows and BlackBerry move into the frame, both require all-new hardware, unlike iOS 6 and Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean" which will be out there around the same time. This only goes to show that these two lack the solid base of the strongly entrenched iOS or Android. Moral of the story, at the end of six years of mobile revolution, we have two strong platforms and two others who are confused and struggling to find their foothold.
Last factor: Adoption. Yes! Androidâs open source platform is exciting for mushrooming cheap phone manufacturers. Itâs almost like cherry on the top in countries, which are desperately in need of cheap phones. Case in point: China. The country is showcasing a surge in smart phone adoption. Hold on to your seats because the level playing grounds are about to change. Chinaâs Huawei, the manufacturer of cheap phones appears to be an Android torchbearer. This means the OS is gaining a strong foothold in developing, technology-thirsty countries across Asia and Africa.
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(Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2012/aug/29/flurry-stats-bric-apps)
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While making inroads into the BRIC geography will give Android the edge and a safe haven, it also faces the battle of poor battery life and other challenges of being paired with cheap device makers. Its strategic loss in the software patent situation in the US and Europe may also have Google change its business approach in these regions. What is interesting to note here is that in markets like China, Google doesnât rule the roost as a top search engine. This may add to the dissemination woes with Android. One view we came across is for Google to take the license fee route as a realistic way to monetize Android in these places rather than any other business model. This is definitely thought provoking.
On the other hand we have Apple in the same market, for which releasing geography-centric products is an unthinkable option! Hence from the perspective of app developers, Android may still be a less lucrative platform than iOS. However candid as it may be, a look at statistics from the developing world shows that the future will be plastered with the ubiquitous green robot.
So to conclude, the above success metrics portrays Android as the OS emperor only in a single dimension â smart phone category. The platform faces stiff competition in the tablet market, which is ruled by Apple. The tablet giant here has the perfect winning formula of a brilliant OS that is supported by a well-integrated hardware, which is focused on seamless, enriching user experience. What we mean by that? That takes another post to reveal.
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