Now that blogging has hit its cruising altitude, all eyes have been on the steady climb of social networking as it entered the mainstream over the past year. With the successes of 2007, most notably the astounding growth of Facebook and to a lesser extent, LinkedIn, there’s a growing trend toward companies and organizations creating social networks of their own to create this “community” thing they’ve heard so much about. Many have been collossal failures (Wal-mart, I’m looking at you), and some have been mild successes.
At my day job, this is something that I’ve discussed in length with many clients looking to enter the realm of community, and one major thing that stands out from each of these conversations is that the reality of social networking is far more complex than it seems on the surface. I’ve taken notes from these conversations, and have tried to boil them down to a few things to keep in mind when conceptualizing a social network.
Incentive. So you have the newest social network. Start by assuming that nobody cares and work forward from there. By asking people to sign up, you’re asking them to spend something more precious than money – you’re asking them to spend time, so you need to make sure that the reward is worth the ongoing investment. Things like contests and prizes are ingenuine and have diminishing returns. Incentive has to be real and ongoing.
Validity. Is the content going to be valid and useful to the target user? Facebook’s main feature is that it allows you to keep up-to-date with a lot of people, which is meaningful to university students and young adults, but is much less meaningful if your target is dentists. Think benefit for the user, not benefit for the publisher. The more beneficial it is for the target user, the more likely it is to be suggested to someone else by an exisiting member.
Exclusivity vs. Openness. There’s no right or wrong here – but it depends heavily on your target group. A social network for doctors or lawyers will likely benefit from exclusivity, but exclusivity will obviously affect the growth of the network. Interestingly enough, Facebook grew at first because it was exclusive to university students, but ultimately exploded when it opened its doors to everyone. Would it have worked without that exclusivity? Hard to say, but my gut says no. On the other hand, do you know anyone who uses Google’s invite-only Orkut?
Mass. The playgound is only as fun as the people playing in it. The key is to provide enough equipment to keep the early adopters occupied until everyone else gets out for recess. If your community is built on the interaction within a closed system from day one, momentum will be hard to build and attrition rates will be high. A traffic flatline means death for social networking – especially at the beginning.
Activity. How active does a network require the user to be? University students may be content checking a site every half hour when they’re procrastinating writing a paper, but if you’re trying to attract people with any level of seniority in a professional environment, the site should still be useful even if it’s only viewed once a week or as needed. LinkedIn is a good example of this. I visit the site once or twice a month, usually to accept an invitation. If I had to do it much more than that, the obligation would likely outweigh the benefit.
Focus. General interest is fine for a general audience, but for a narrow audience, keep a narrow focus. The ones who want generalized discussion will already be on Facebook, and don’t want to have the same thing in two places. Of course, you can’t control the topics of conversation, but the tools you provide will alter the focus.
Networking. This is a no brainer. Sure, social networks will let me spam my friends and ask them to join me in some virtual space, but how does it improve my network? Can I make new friends or acquaintances based on interest? Facebook isn’t very good at this because of its locked-down nature, but it’s intended to be for friends. If you have a site based on interest, then networking is an important part.
Aspiration. Is the network aspirational or factual? Most fall into the latter category, but there is potential in an aspirational network for those who want to craft their ideals. Second Life’s success was based almost entirely on aspiration – to look cooler, to live in a cooler place, to fly… to get a virtual blowjob while naked skydiving. God, Second Life is stupid.
Ease of adoption. How easy is it for me to get up and running and start benefitting from your network? Mass has a lot to do with this, but a lot of the details are in the design as well. If I need to spend months learning the features and trying to get my friends to sign up before I can get the desired benefit, then I’m likely going to abandon it. Establish real benefit and make it easy to get to – even for the newbies.
Feature to noise ratio. How many features does your site have? How many are garbage that nobody will want? Facebook had the right idea by treating their core network as an operating system. The features you want are there, and if you don’t want them, you can delete them. If you want something else, you can build it. Chances are, your site isn’t going to be as robust as Facebook, so separate the good from the bad, and think about a cohesive system that’s easy to use.
This is just a list made from notes I’ve taken talking with clients about what they want to do in the social networking sphere. The bottom line with any social network is that you have to think value to the user over value to the company, or you will fail. Too many ads means more revenue, but people abandoning ship. Focus on selling means a happy CMO, but nobody willing to put up with the hard sell to get what little value there is out of the site. Fake profiles and testimonials saying great fake things about your brand means a well-paid PR firm, but users will see through it.
Social networking is powerful, there’s no doubt about that. The potential that it provides, however, will be harvested by people who think about customers first and business second.
