First off, we met online, via blog, and became friends. Then, once we decided to do this, we started using collaborative, easy-to-use and inexpensive tools to share, plan and allow registration. Then, we and others started blogging about it. Result? Well, I’ve had more people know of and ask me about mesh in the past few days than ever knew of or asked about Expedia back in the day. Seriously, back then, I could go maybe months before running into someone who had so much as heard of it, even when I told them about it (and maaaaan constantly repeating "yes, it *IS* like that Irish Travel’O’City thing, but waaaay better!" used to drive me batty. Reminds me, they still around? :-)).
How times have changed. Yesterday, at a 6-year-old’s birthday party just ten days after we launched, the girl’s Dad started asking me about mesh. Others have said things to me like "sure, everybody’s talking about it." That’s ten days in, with zero ad spend and no tradtitional PR. Wow.
The web has become such an inherent part of how people live their lives and so many conversations are spun up so quickly via previously unknown means that the pace and breadth of the change is stunning.
All very cool, challenging, business-and-society changing stuff, if you think about it. Oh, and *that* is a big part of why we are doing mesh in the first place.