I’ve been getting a number of emails about Google Knol getting promoted on the homepage of google.com. While I haven’t seen it - I start most searches via firefox, this is a huge advantage for companies that control the “Start” or homepage for users. Instantly, a 100 million people can be introduced to a new property with this type of promotion. Yahoo has done this for years, helping numerous properties become reach leaders in their category. MSN did it with setting the homepage in IE and then promoting properties on the homepage of MSN. AOL did it as well when there client was much more prevalent. With HubPages, we had to do it from scratch.
Startups have to build traffic organically, build awareness overtime and tap word of mouth. However, Startups can move quicker, since they don’t have to be prepared for massive scale on day one. They can do it less expensively, with less polish - visitors of big sites expect a highly professional product with minimal glitches, and shift easier. Still, it sure is nice to be able to turn on a firehose of traffic after putting in all the hardwork to build a product. But, for people that do it organically, in the long term it is much more satisfying since the traffic was built from scratch:)
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