[bootload]

"... how did you promote your beta to get to 10k users? ..."

Firstly reliable data backup is a real problem. Anything that can help solve this for users is going to attract attention. Writing your own backup script that reliably backs up your data with RSync and remote servers for example is doable but wastes time and effort. Secondly you can download the software, try it out, change it. But most consumers are not developers and are not interested in playing with software and hardware themselves so they look for a company that provides the service.

So the key bits here are

- Solving a users problem

- Show don't tell.

- Provide a service that users can use if they don't do it themselves.

- Have something that will continually attract new users (articles, software, discussion, etc)

The technical bits make for a good read and can be found here ~ http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/trunk/docs/architecture.tx...

[robmnl]

that's really good insight, thank you.