Free video site tu.tv is in the throes of viral uptake. Since launch Christmas, traffic has grown to millions of unique users a month.The service is currently the number two free video service in Spain, behind youtube.com.
The Alexa service ranks tu.tv number 88 in the its Spanish Top 100 list for today. Following its current trend, it will enter the top 50 by the end of the month. A look at the traffic graphs shows the doubling period is around a month; a worthy contender in the list of present day web2.0 success stories.
Jon Elosegui, head of innovation, is no stranger to viral growth; with half a dozen viral growth services to his credit in the 1990s and early 2000, he has detailed insight into how to create a thriving online communities. One of his salient themes is that it is about the product, not the promotion. The tu.tv service has had little uptake in the mainstream press, or among the blogosphere elite, the A-listers. Viral marketing has other vectors with which to access the target internet users.
When you have a hit product, promotion is often not necessary, and sometimes undesirable. The world is getting smaller. In the rush to improve the product and infrastructure in the face of ferocious uptake, marketing must take a backseat.
The innovation team is currently incubating new projects. You will see no press release, nor blogosphere comment on launch. Just straight launch into the young spanish internet user segment. A somewhat perplexing view of PR and “how to influence internet users”, but you cannot argue with the traffic numbers.
[Disclosure: We are invested in tu.tv]