LaunchRock is a platform for viral marketing your landing page, inspired in part by a startup called Hipster that managed to get more than 10,000 signups in one weekend without revealing what it does by giving earlier beta access to users who shared a custom link with friends.Fork.ly, another stealthy startup, encouraged users to evangelize it the same way; if three friends signed up, the referrer gets "priority access" to the service when it launches.

LaunchRock will automate the custom URLs, tracks referrals and hosts the landing page for free. It's currently hyping itself with a contest: a free domain for the first 50 people who refer more than ten friends.

"We worked through the night to build LaunchRock to launch itself this morning in just a half a day," cofounder Jameson Detweiler wrote on the LaunchRock blog. "Can a startup launch itself? It sure can. And you can too. Seriously, how meta is that?"

ajeffries [at] observer.com | @adrjeffries