[somenameforme]

It sometimes confuses me how people seem to not think that word of mouth is a thing. It absolutely is. In the games industry, there are endless examples. Because on places like Steam, you generally only get promoted if you're already doing well - yet there are countless games that flop at launch meaning 0 visibility, yet they also see great long-tail success.

One of my favorite is Kenshi. [1] Within a few months after launch, the dev was left with literally tens of users. Yet he continued working on it endlessly (while working as a part time security guard) and today it has near to more players than ever. And that's because of word of mouth. Which I suppose is something I'm also here partaking in. It's a great game!

[1] - https://steamcharts.com/app/233860

[Fubarberry]

Word of mouth is a great way to grow, but only once you already have users. Word of mouth requires people to already be your customer to bring in new customers, so the less business you have the less potentially useful it is.

If word of mouth is the only advertisement replacement allowed, it would force many companies to rely on fake sockpuppet customers to try to get started.