General Discussions

**Learning Newbie** · 01-16-2008, 04:48 PM

PR 6 on a blogspot subdomain. Alexa says more impressive nonsense. Those stats are moderately useful, not very, but I think everyone can agree PR 6 is a sign of a more popular site than PR 1. We can stop talking about the metrics now.

Here's a site somebody started and you would think it would never get 15 people a day. They published books and I bet there's a movie in the works, with big name Hollywood stars. People started anonymously sending in their deepest darkest secrets they never told anybody before in their life, on the back of a post card, and the guy would publish them on his blog. You wouldn't think that could take off, but people felt like they were letting go of a heavy weight, and it turned into a cult sensation.

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

Here's an exmaple

Maybe this should go in the SEO forum, but I'm not trying to start a conversation about how to be successful in Google. I think it's fascinating a thing like this (or Fake Steve Jobs) took off. I also think if you look back, it seems almost like how could it not become popular? Stuff that went viral without any marketing?

What do you think?

**fastreplies** · 01-16-2008, 05:09 PM

This is just another proof that you don’t have to be marketing genius.
People are enjoying smut and have that on their favors list as their favorite pastime, fetish of sort and will participate in anything that will let them get off

fastreplies

**ADAM Web Design** · 01-16-2008, 05:27 PM

I think fastreplies nailed it to some extent. You'll never go broke appealing to the lowest common denominator. It's a lesson that online marketing has taught us again and again.

I've never heard of it myself, but it doesn't surprise me that something like this caught on. It has all the elements that appeal to the masses: simplicity, smut, nothing that requires more than 8 seconds of thought, the ability to participate in something of little to no personal benefit without realizing it, etc.

**vangogh** · 01-16-2008, 11:51 PM

I can see where this site would catch on. It's somewhat voyeuristic for people reading other people's dirty secrets and for the people who leave the secrets it might very well be the only way they can unburden some things.

If you start reading through them you see that most won't seem like a big deal to us, but together they do shed a lot of light on the human condition.

Quote:

i'm afraid to admit what i want for my life because i know i will never get it.

That quotes speaks volumes and I'm sure the person who submitted it isn't the only person to think it. It's a fear of failure and think or how many people have that same fear. I'd bet there will be a lot of people who will feel better about themselves seeing that someone else things the same thing.

The marketing is built in to the product in many ways. Using the word 'secret' probably makes a lot of people want to tell others. The concept is viral to a large degree.

I'd guess that a lot of these aren't really someone's secret, but rather an artistic statement. Some of them probably are just a secret on a homemade postcard, but some look a little too well down and look like a lot of creative thought went into matching the statement with the image behind it.

But looking at the