The Social Network Chicken And Egg Problem

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I got this interestin post from coders lounge
    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:

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

Heart Touching

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This is a letter from a mother to a daughter (a son as well).

“My dear girl, the day you see I’m getting old, Iask you to please be patient, but most of all, try to understand what I’m going through.

If when we talk, I repeat the same thing a thousand times, don’t interrupt to say: “You said the same thing a minute ago”… Just listen, please. Try to remember the times when you were little and I would read the same story night after night until you would fall asleep.

When I don’t want to take a bath, don’t be mad and don’t embarrass me. Remember when I had to run after you making excuses and trying to get you to take a shower when you were just a girl?

When you see how ignorant I am when it comes to new technology, give me the time tolearn and don’t look at me that way… remember, honey, I patiently taught you how to do many things like eating appropriately, getting dressed, combing your hair and dealing with life’s issues every day… the day you see I’m getting old, I ask you to please be patient, but most of all, try to understand what I’m going through.
If I occasionally lose track of what we’re talking about, give me the time to remember, and if I can’t, don’t be nervous, impatient or arrogant. Just know in your heart that the most important thing for me is to be with you.
And when my old, tired legs don’t let me moveas quickly as before, give me your hand the same way that I offered mine to you when you first walked.
When those days come, don’t feel sad… just be with me, and understand me while I get to the end of my life with love.
I’ll cherish and thank you for the gift of time and joy we shared. With a big smile and the huge love I’ve always had for you, I just want to say, I love you… my darling daughter.”

Worthwhile Experience

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You see, I’ve come to believe something in this life.  There’ s a huge difference between success and excellence.  A computer scientist working as a high ranking military official, that’s success, huge one.  But is there satisfaction? Yes? No?  Whatever the answer may be, it’ll indicate whether computer science was really a passion of yours or you went into it due to pressure.  Excellence is this: You do what you love to do, I mean that good talent of yours is used by you, either income comes in rapidly or slowly, you’re happy.  Friend, I learnt from the famous Indian movie “3 idiots” that, when you follow excellence, success will run after you.  The summary is that, do what you’re good at.  So what will you go for? Success or excellence? I am running after excellence, and believe me, it’s been a Worthwhile Experience.

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Sister uses Moringa instead of vegetable oil.

My darling sister, Nifemi, did something funny this evening. She was supposed to prepare jollof rice for herself, to take to school. While looking for vegetable oil, she came across Moringa water prepared by my dad. My sis mistook it for oil and used it. According to correspondence, she even over-added average quantity while waiting for it to bring out the taste of oil. Oh my God! I couldn’t stop laughing when the report came to me.

OneCrier.com

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It only alerts you if you are close to the event venue or indicated interest in such type of events. For instance, if I live in Ikeja, Lagos why should I receive alerts about programs happening in Akure, Ondo state?

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All you need do is keep your phone on and leave the rest to OneCrier. We wont spam your phone. Our hatred for spam inspired this project 🙂Image