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Where's the best place to get noticed?

 
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Nitrogen
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Joined: 23 Aug 2007
Posts: 4
PostPosted: Nov 08, 2007 2:13pm    Post subject: Where's the best place to get noticed? Reply with quote
Hi,

We have had an IRC network up and running for some time, but we get around 10 to 15 people in here.
We've been telling eachother we need more people coming in since the flow of conversation is quite slow.. we'd like more people checking it out.

Where's the best place for people to notice our network without spamming or flooding other IRC networks, forums, etc?

I don't participate in many forums personally, but the ones I do participate in already have a link to our IRC network in my signature.

Any ideas to get people to notice us?

  • We're an independant network, we won't link up to major networks demanding we change our name..
  • We have several linked servers (not all of them are always connected, since we don't get that many users).
  • We're commercial too, anyone from a forum can connect and start a channel or something.
  • We provide full services for our users.
  • 24/7 opers.

Nothing too bad, huh?

Our network is XettexNet (irc.xettex.net - main channel is #xettexnet) if anyone is wondering.. it's in SearchIRC if you look for it.
We've been in SearchIRC listings for a few months now. Very Happy

Thank you,
Nitrogen.
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Nitrogen
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Joined: 23 Aug 2007
Posts: 4
PostPosted: Nov 08, 2007 2:35pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
I've read a few threads here about drawing attention..
Like, what we offer and so on.

We offer a few things, like secure (SSL) connections, offer people from other communities to setup a channel, sometimes we're on TeamSpeak and offer IRC help to new-comers.
Probably a few other things, but I don't wanna make it like I'm advertising it here.

But can anyone think of something?
Perhaps something to change?
Something new to offer new-comers?

I'm eager to hear what you guys say.

Thanks,
Nitrogen.
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ircmojo
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Joined: 02 Mar 2007
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Location: $HOME sweet $HOME
PostPosted: Nov 08, 2007 4:09pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Nitrogen wrote:
I've read a few threads here about drawing attention..
Like, what we offer and so on.

We offer a few things, like secure (SSL) connections, offer people from other communities to setup a channel, sometimes we're on TeamSpeak and offer IRC help to new-comers.
Probably a few other things, but I don't wanna make it like I'm advertising it here.

But can anyone think of something?
Perhaps something to change?
Something new to offer new-comers?

I'm eager to hear what you guys say.

Thanks,
Nitrogen.


The act is easy to say, but harder to do and mainly consists of 5 items.

1> Advertise where and how you are welcome to do so. Please remember that it will take time to build a network, you can't expect to make 1 post and get 7,000 users before breakfast. There are some nets that are 10 years old and still only have 300 users. My net has only existed for a few months and I have roughly 150 users. So it widely varies. As much as I appriciate and respect SearchIRC, I must say that here is not a very good place to ask for users. It's a matter of simple common sense really, most of the people here have their own network and they generally don't shut down theirs to join yours. Sure you can pick up a few users here and there, but you are basiclly "preaching to the choir" when you ask for users here. You'd have much better luck on forums that don't already have a userbase that I'd guess is 90% network admins.

I'm not saying to NOT advertise here. I'm not suggesting that at all. SearchIRC is a great resource. I'm just saying that most of the people that monitor this forum are just like you ... they have a small network and want to get users too.

2> OFFER SOMETHING UNIQUE THAT NO ONE ELSE DOES!!

If you can't tell #2 is rather important. It's very tough to build a network when you can only offer something everyone else uses. example, most everyone uses Unreal/Anope, so it's pointless to try to "sell" BotServ and vHosts or SSL .. because 4300 of your competitors already do and they aren't getting users either.

3> Find a niche no one else offers and advertise it.

You stand a greater chance at success if you can code your own features so that you can truely offer something unique, remember. if you didn't write the code, it's used elsewhere. Which means that others offer that feature too. To be honest, unless you are into warez heavily or are a coder that can write C or C++ and have a few years to spare while you write an ircd/services combo never before seen or at least can code enough to fork an existing set, I'd say your chances are rather slim that you can rise above the rest. I say that simply because of the massive amount of networks out there and it's not an insult at you or your abilities. Just the fact of overwhelming odds against you.

Everyone offers:

ssl
java chat
services
BotServ bots
vhosts
friendly/experienced opers (although some have problems proving it)
no lag

Some offer:

email
webspace
TeamSpeak
eggdrop hosting services

4> Have truely experienced staff.

This can be rather confusing. I don't mean have staff that have idled on < 200 user networks for a few years. Seriously, any one can do that. My 12 year old daughter can even do that and she barely knows how to type. I mean have staff that have been on huge Top 10 networks of 25,000 users or greater for a few years. there is a HUGE difference between 2 years on a 200 user net and 2 years on a 140,000 user net ... trust me! I've personally been on IRC for about 12 years, been an adminfor 10 years and have admined on a 140,000 user net for a few years and I can tell you that there is a huge difference!

An important reason for this type of staff expereince is 2 fold, 1> the staff can be trained by truely experienced opers to properly handle issues that arise, and they will arise. 2> Such experience is helpful with gaining users and coming up with proper ways to advertise because they have seen how the top 10 nets do it first hand.

5> DON"T FORCE YOUR USERS TO DO ANYTHING!!!

If they don't want to be in any channels, let them .. just because they are in 0 channels doesn't mean they are lost or are doing something malicious. There is such thing as PM and DCC Chat which doesn't require channels. I don't know who invented the idea that users that are not in channels are lost or doing something bad.

This is one of the areas where you need to be reactive and not proactive. If you annoy users for no good reason, and being in 0 channels is NOT a good reason .. you will only succeed in driving them away, they will get the idea that you are spying on them and know everything they type .. and thus go elsewhere.

Another thing is using umode +W (opers see who /whois'ed them). DO NOT ALLOW OPERS TO SEND NOTICES/MESSAGES OF ANY KIND TO USERS JUST BECAUSE THEY WHOISED THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There is NO such thing as a whois flood!!!! It's completely harmless to all parties involved. If a user wants to /whois you 5000 times a minute ... LET THEM!!! they will only succeed at flooding themselves off the network and it will not waste bandwidth because it's only text from the server local to the user and the data stream is so small that you wouldn't notice it even if you was watching your throughput! We are talking a few kbytes at most.. PLEASE forget about umode +W!! Another thing about umode +W is that some think that if a user /whois'es and IRCop that they *must* need help .. WRONG!!! They don't .. /whois is an information gathering tool .. If a user needs help they will ask!! TRUST ME!!

I credit ALL of our users to a combination of all 5 of this bullets. Sure 150 isn't a huge number, but we are larger than 90% of the networks out there.
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Nitrogen
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Joined: 23 Aug 2007
Posts: 4
PostPosted: Nov 09, 2007 2:33pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Wow, thanks ircmojo. Razz
That's very informative.

We've taken some tips into consideration about not bugging the users who arn't in a channel. Smile

Even thanks to me posting here got a few people on which is good. Wink

We'll just see what we're capable, of course we can't offer users everything, we'll just do what we can.

Thanks again, ircmojo!
Nitrogen.
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Anarchy
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Joined: 26 Oct 2007
Posts: 172
Location: Cabot Arkansas
PostPosted: Nov 30, 2007 4:32am    Post subject: Reply with quote
another thing do not advertise you have something that you really dont have. and dont clone your services to make it look like you have more users then what you really do, thats maybe one of the most annoying things ever.
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lagmaster
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Joined: 06 Nov 2004
Posts: 116
PostPosted: Nov 30, 2007 12:39pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
a good thing is to try and find websites similar to what type of chat you want on your irc network.

if it's games, find some clans or try and find the official games rooms and such.

if you can tie into maybe 2-3 sites. they do the advertising on their site for you Smile
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PingBad
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Joined: 05 Feb 2005
Posts: 2026
Location: New Zealand
PostPosted: Nov 30, 2007 2:07pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
In a nutshell, try to gain some sort of affiliation with established communities in providing online realtime chat services.
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