MySpace Case Study: Not a purely viral start 

Why profiled on Startup-Review.com

In less than 3 years time, MySpace has become one
of the top 5 most visited sites in the US, racking up 48 million unique
visitors and 27.4B page views in June 2006. While it will probably
never come close to the profitability of Google, eBay, or Yahoo, it has
the potential to be the Internet’s next “platform” company. It has made
for particularly interesting case study material for leapfrogging early
social networking leader, Friendster.

Interviews conducted: I interviewed several people
who were close to MySpace in the early days, although no longer with
the company. I would consider both of these to be excellent sources. I
have also spoken to a number of people in the social networking
industry – product managers at competitors, MySpace service providers,
etc. I am also a board observer at a company that competes with MySpace.

Key success factors

Gave users more control over their MySpace pages, enabling a higher degree of self-expression and communication with friends

Too many companies treat their customers like crap. It’s frustrating and inexcusable. You don’t like being treated like crap, right?

So why treat your customers that way?

1. Withhold information.....
2. Use high-pressure sales tactics.....
3. Rope-a-Dope marketing....
4. Overcharging....
5. Overwhelm people with options.....
6. Make it hard for people to buy.....
7. Assume the sale is done.....

Building the Perfect Beast: The Igor Naming Guide to Creating Product
and Company Names

We created the Igor Naming Guide in order to demystify the naming process.
In it we show how and why great product and company names work, when focus
groups and standard ways of thinking about them might have predicted otherwise.
Igor's own naming process is presented in excruciating but logical detail.

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A guerrilla manual to driving your competition up the wall.