The different ways in which growth hacks manifest themselves becomes apparent when taking a closer look at different instances of applying this tactic. Hotmail gathered a lot of positive attention in 1998 with this simple, yet innovative strategy: the free-of-charge e-mail service tagged a text on every e-mail sent that solicited users to sign up for Hotmail and included a link for registration. This simple measure turned the e-mail provider’s users into Hotmail billboards and helped gained more users, a move that helped gain over 12 million additional users within a year. This growth hacking method is commonly employed by providers of homepage toolkits, which often provide free-to-use basic versions. In addition to offering a gratis (albeit limited) range of functions, these also add small advertising banners, which include links that signal to the user which toolkit was used to construct the site they’re currently visiting.
And as the following example from Twitter shows, growth hackers need to be savvy on technical knowhow as well. When the messaging service first appeared in 2006, the company was able to quickly determine that users following a minimum of at least 30 other Twitter users were able to more quickly understand new topics, like hashtags and retweets, resulting in more frequent use. Twitter capitalized on this knowledge by installing a feature in the accounts of new users that recommended different accounts that users may want to follow. As a result, users were able to more quickly reach the magic number of 30. Pinterest, which appeared four years later, takes this concept one step further: whoever registers within this network automatically follows users of selected top accounts.
Facebook and WhatsApp experienced almost-uncanny level of success with their various growth hacks. Their path to quick growth was paved with existing contact lists. In 2010, Facebook purchased the Malaysian company Octazen solutions, which specialized in importing e-mail contacts. Soon thereafter, Facebook introduced its contact import function, which enabled account holders to use their e-mail contact lists to invite new users to join the social network. The networking strategy for WhatsApp worked even better. Thanks to the automatic import of contacts from users’ cellphone contact lists, it’s easy for users to find one another, and phone numbers make inviting friends and acquaintances to the app a simple task. Within the course of a few years, this strategy resulted in the application gaining over a billion users, all without having to invest a dime in marketing.