We’ve all seen the usual success story: a 20-something programmer gets an idea, launches a website, and within months he’s already got huge traffic, multi-million dollar exit options and an interview with Wired. All the traffic graphs go straight up without faltering even for a day.

These types of stories have created an atmosphere in which not growing - even for a short period - is considered death. But is it always so? What about all those services that were welcomed with mild enthusiasm or even complete indifference, sinking slowly into oblivion, their traffic graph falling day after day, only to suddenly start rising again? Because, you know, there is such a thing as recovery in the world of web 2.0. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen; sometimes the catalyst is a new feature or option; sometimes the service was simply waiting to be discovered; and sometimes there’s no good reason at all; the tipping point appears out of nowhere.

A word of caution: don’t take the title of this article literally. The five cases I’ve described below are all very different and these companies were never really “dead.” They all share a same basic trait, though: their future looked grim at one point, but they managed to bounce back and continue growing.

1. Pluck [Alexa, Compete]

Pluck was acquired by Demand Media. What do you think, based on the traffic graph above, when did the sale occur? Somewhere around January 2006? Wrong. Pluck was doing quite nice as an RSS reader back in the day, but its popularity stalled in 2006, and at the end of that year they completely ditched the RSS reader idea. But, they were acquired by Demand Media for no less than $75 million dollars in March 2008! What happened? Pluck completely changed their product, focus, and business strategy: they went with a white label social networking solution, and it paid off bigtime in the end. A lesson to learn: changing everything and starting from scratch can sometimes be a good thing.

2. Mahalo [Alexa, Compete]

Remember this article by Valleywag? Hindsight is 20/20, I know, but I always thought that basing conclusions on an Alexa graph one month after a service goes live is a bad idea. Yes, the traffic looked awful back in July 2007, but it bounced back nearly after that and has continued to rise ever since.

The reason for this was the fact that Mahalo is a well funded, intelligently led project with a lot of updates and new features being added nearly every week, and users (as well as journalists and bloggers) have recognized this. The idea - human powered search - seemed like a debt-incurring trainwreck, but so far Calacanis has managed to pull it off with style.

3. FriendFeed [Alexa, Compete]

FriendFeed is undeniably one of the hottest startups right now; just check out recent mentions on Twitter and blogs and you’ll see that the blogging elite is raving about it non-stop. It doesn’t surprise me: the number of social networks is increasing, and it’s getting harder and harder to follow it all. FriendFeed was merely one in the long list of lifestreaming applications, but for one reason or another it captured everyone’s attention as the best of the bunch. Personally, I still think there’s lots of room for improvement in this area, but I can’t deny that FriendFeed is a fine application.

It wasn’t meant to be from the beginning, though; FriendFeed had a jump start back in August 2007 and it seemed to be slowly dying down after that. I doubt anyone would call the project a success in January 2008, but two months later and its graph is soaring up and not showing signs of weakening. The trigger is a no brainer: back in February, FriendFeed was officially launched, giving everyone the possibility to sign up for the service. However, if you think that this is only logical, think again; for example, Joost was doing extremely well when it was in invite-only beta, and it seems to have been losing popularity after the official launch. The sheer fact that FriendFeed became available to everyone did not guarantee growth; it was the powerful word-of-mouth self-generated marketing campaign that propelled it.

4. Friendster [Alexa, Compete]

Friendster is a resilient little bugger. Today, a social network with a declining graph is immediately being declared dead meat, and we all know how many times it happened to Friendster. But, after every bad period Friendster has somehow managed to get their groove back and continue to grow. The folks at Friendster are often repeating that they’ve always been, and still are, one of the leading social networks; the hype may not be on their side, but looking at the traffic graphs, you cannot really say they’re wrong about it.

It’s hard to predict Friendster’s future; with MySpace and Facebook leading the pack, and Friendster usually being late on major developments, I see them following the path of Bebo which recently got acquired by AOL. Given their history so far, though, it’s probably not a good idea to predict that they’ll fizzle out if the acquisition doesn’t happen soon.

5. LinkedIn [Alexa, Compete]

LinkedIn is often quoted as one of social networking’s success stories. The site is doing well traffic and growth-wise, and - unlike 99% of web startups - they can boast the fact they’re actually profitable

The explosive growth, however, has begun somewhere at the beginning of 2006; LinkedIn has been launched in 2003 and it has lingered without making a serious impact for three full years. One of the contributing factors to the sudden success was surely the introduction of a search engine which enabled users to find other LinkedIn members. Today, three years without traffic is a sure death if you’re a web startup, let alone a social network; but the folks at LinkedIn have pulled through this depressive period and it paid off bigtime in the end. Today, many think that, as far as social networks go, they have the best perspective ahead of them; while others are offering silly games, ugly profiles and pointless chatter, LinkedIn is all about business - serious business.

Conclusion

Obviously, you cannot simply write off any web startup whose traffic stops growing for a week or two, unless you want to risk looking stupid. The fact, however, that I’ve had a tough time finding success stories such as the above shows that once you lose the magic, it’s really tough to get back on track; and unfortunately, people forget really fast.

It can be done, though: you can shift your focus, like Pluck did, innovate like Friendfeed and LinkedIn, continue to add features and raise awareness of your product like Mahalo, or simply keep doing what you’ve been doing like Friendster and hope for the best. The important thing is, if you really believe in what you’re doing, you shouldn’t give up at the first sign of decreasing traffic or a blog post proclaiming you “dead.” Keep it up and prove them wrong; the payoff is twice as sweet.

[Via - Mashable.Com]

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