I have creaed a small web-application that randomly displays a fortune (or "kotowaza" in Japanese - although the exact meaning is slightly different) with a small twist - it also allows the user to add his/her own favorite fortunes. I also provided a short HTML source code that allows users to paste this mini-app to their blogs - positioning it as a blog plug-in.
I have published this app to my blog readers (mostly of them are Japanese) to test how such a simple application will succeed because of this very much web2.0-like small twist - "user's participation", or "user generated contents".
Here is a quick summary of the first 24 hours:
1. Visitors: ~5,000 - this is the average traffic to my blog
2. Users who pasted this mini-app to their blog: 5
3. Fortune view: ~32,000
4. Fortune posted: ~200
I think #4 is quite significant considering only 5,000 people visited this blog. It is possible that some users have posted multiple fortunes (I did not add the mechanism to track it), but I am quite sure that it was a large number of users (probably over 100) because of the timing of the posting. It is quite significant to get even 1 to 2 percent of perticipation.
I don't see any viral effect because of #2 yet, which is understandable only after 24 hours - but I already start seeing some hits from those secondary blogs.
I am quite curious how this app will perform over time. Will it become widely popular because of viral effect, or will the number of posting goes down overtime when the article goes out of the first page of my blog (even though I keep it in the side bar)? I will write up a report later again - stay tuned.
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