Right after minute 32:00 Alex Schultz says "Facebook was viral via word of mouth because of the awesome product". Is this really true? I think "Use your email login and password and invite your contacts" namely contact import was the viral technique. The payload and frequency was high and the CR was ok.
I remember Facebook growth days somewhat well. People logged in with their emails and passwords were asked to provide their email provider passwords (to be fair, somewhat deceivingly) to invite everyone in their addressbook to come to Facebook. And I remember quite well some people didn't event notice the difference between whether they were asked for a Facebook password or their email provider password, and didn't really understand what was asked by inviting their friends.
FWIW Facebook tore through my college in a couple weeks way before they had any type of inviting mechanisms. So PM fit was definitely there and virality was all word of mouth.
you guys are totally right (in the growth tactics I definitely tell you lots of the non-organic stuff). That being said the idea here is "how to start a startup" and so I was trying to focus on what got Facebook the first 50million users not the next 1.3Billion and how we think about growth for products at Facebook and how I think about it when advising companies. It's always cool to see the different comment threads (one saying I'm too optimized for big company growth, one saying I'm talking about too early, I am hoping that means I pitched it about right :) )
I remember Facebook growth days somewhat well. People logged in with their emails and passwords were asked to provide their email provider passwords (to be fair, somewhat deceivingly) to invite everyone in their addressbook to come to Facebook. And I remember quite well some people didn't event notice the difference between whether they were asked for a Facebook password or their email provider password, and didn't really understand what was asked by inviting their friends.