How ChatGPT got its users

Say it plainly: this was an event, not a channel. Read openai.com/index/chatgpt/. There is no campaign, no embargo list, no launch partner. One line does the work: usage is free during the research preview, try it now at chatgpt.com. Press wrote about it because a reader could touch the thing in the same minute they read about it. If your product needs a waitlist, a demo call or a card on file, you have an announcement, not a launch.

done whenOpen your own launch page as a stranger. Time the gap from landing to first real output, with no signup, no card, no call. If you cannot get under a minute, fix that before writing a line of press outreach.

The unit that spread was the transcript, not the press release. That same post prints sample dialogues under four tabs, Fix code, Home security, Fermat's Little Theorem, Neighbor introduction, each shown as a full user and ChatGPT exchange you read without clicking. It taught the first wave what to try and what to screenshot. Put four raw outputs of your own product on your launch page, printed in full, unretouched.

done whenCount the concrete, copyable outputs on your launch page. Zero means the reader has to invent the use case alone, and most will not. Then watch which of the four gets quoted back to you first.

Publish your own Limitations section. The ChatGPT post carries one, written by OpenAI: answers that sound plausible but are wrong, sensitivity to how a question is phrased, excessive verbosity. Naming your failure modes on day one takes the easy critical angle off the table and buys patience from the people who try it and hit a wall. Add a Methods section too, so the how is on the record before anyone asks.

done whenWrite the five meanest true bullets about your product. If you cannot put them on your own launch page under a heading called Limitations, you are not ready to be written about.

Turn the spike into input before it drains. The post also ran a ChatGPT Feedback Contest, up to $500 in API credits, entered through a form linked inside the product interface, asking specifically for harmful outputs in normal non-adversarial use. The traffic is one-time; what people tell you during it is not. Ship a one-click report path inside the product on day one, with a stated reason to use it.

done whenOn launch day, can a user reach you from inside the product in one click, with a clear reason to bother? Count reports received in week one. Under ten and your loop is decorative.

What survives the spike is an index and a cadence. The launch post still sits at openai.com/index/chatgpt/, dated November 30 2022, filed under Product in the same feed as this week's posts on openai.com/news. The ChatGPT Release Notes page on help.openai.com shows an entry from hours ago. The event bought a permanent URL and readers who come back. Everything since ships into that, not into press.

done whenPick one permanent URL you own for the launch, not a third-party post. Add a dated entry there every week for eight weeks. In week eight, check whether return visits to that page are rising or flat.