Why not require your users to bring in new users to your site to avoid account suspension? | Hacker News Reader

Why not require your users to bring in new users to your site to avoid account suspension?

1 pointamichail9 comments

For example, you might require each user to bring in two new active users every month.

If they don't, their account will be suspended until they do.

Why would users put up with this? It is in their self-interest to have the site succeed.

Once traffic is high enough, this policy can be relaxed/eliminated.

P.S. I'm very upset with the failure of both http://numbrosia.com and http://chatbotgame.com to bring in much traffic. Numbrosia in particular can be very addictive but there is little incentive for addicted players to get their like-minded friends to play.

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I'm sorry, but this is a terrible idea. If you have to bring in two new users a month, that's 24 users a year. There are probably about 24 people I know that I'd be ok with sending such an invite to. However, after I send out an invite to the first two during the first month, the next month those two will also have to send out two invites. Odds are that at least a few of those four invites will go to people in my potential invite pool. I'm guessing that within 4 months tops, all the people I'd want to send invites to would have already received one.

Also, keep in mind that such a requirement would definitely reduce the number of users who accept invitations to join. "Oh, hey, join this free, immature site that also requires you to do their work for you (bring in new users" "Yeah, screw that, buddy."

You can't force social marketing. By trying to make users spread the word, you'll end up alienating them and hastening the end for your site unless it is SO AMAZING that it dispenses kittens and blowjobs every time you sign up a new user. If you have a decent idea, you can get the word out and people will spread the news (centsports.com comes to mind, it didn't take long for most of my friends to hop on that via word of mouth).

No. Just no.

Sure, once you have some users (and are actually providing a useful service, or something fun, to them), you could encourage them to get other people to join, perhaps via an invite link, or just a note on the main page asking them to. You could even give them benefits if they attract more users to the site (temporarily remove ads, give them some benefit, or whatever, depending on what type of site it is). But requiring users to get more users to join will drive them away, and is sort of an admission of the fact that the site isn't very good. After all, if it was, users would recommend it to their friends because they liked it, not because they had to.

Because people will say "screw this" and leave your site for good?

Perhaps the site has no direct competition?

Doesn't matter. Lots of people just want to get something done. The more rules you put in place to prevent this will just get annoying. Better to think of a different way to approach the problem.

I suspect such requirements will be gamed with fake email accounts, which are then abandonded

Much better to do Knighthood on facebook style pyramid schemes: bring in people and you get stronger.

The new users they bring in must be active. To get around the problem with one user using multiple accounts, you could look at overall traffic, require a unique cell phone number to register, reward use of only one account (e.g., to preserve your score in a game), etc.

IMO, those kind of things would cause me to leave the site. Unless it truly offered something amazing, it wouldn't be worth the effort for me

Of course, I may not be the target demographic, just my 2 cents

I don't have anything else to add to the discussion so I won't be checking this thread, I hope you have a good discussion and get lots of solid feedback =)

No one would sign up in the first place. Hordes of vitamin sellers from Utah have trained the public that way.

Unless the name of your site is facebook.

Numbrosia was kind of cool. But they are just fun games, are you sure they were ever destined to be high-traffic sites or pay for themselves ? Not everything cool is meant to be a business.

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