Everyone’s feeling the pressure from this recession and budgets are being cut/tightened. Now, more than ever, it’s important for teams, athletes and agencies to get what they can for free. While there are many other reasons for getting involved in social media, engaging fans and customers online via social media is a great way to [...]
Social Networks Need To Provide Value Beyond Connecting
Posted on June 19th, 2008
Everyone wants to start their own social network these days. And it makes sense that brands and companies want to jump on the social networking bandwagon. According to the recent Consumer Internet Barometer, one out of every four people online visits a social networking website.
But the competition for people’s attention is increasing rapidly. People only have time to participate in a certain number of sites. My guess is the average social network user may be involved with one to three sites. Chances are that their main involvement will be on Facebook or MySpace and then they MIGHT spend some time on a niche site that caters more to something they’re very passionate about. They use the Facebook/MySpaces to connect with people and keep in touch and the niche sites to read about breaking news and share opinions, and participate in more in-depth conversations.
So everyone’s thinking they need to start a social network and get rich. But there’s already enough places for people to “connect” and share their profile, pictures, videos, etc. How are you going to stand out from the other sites? Even in sports, there are a good number of websites with social networking features–at least in the general sports space. Just offering the ability to connect isn’t good enough anymore, in my humble opinion.
If you’re starting a social network, you should be thinking about things like:
- Can this site help solve a problem for people who join?
- How am I going to differentiate this from the others out there?
- How am I going to attract users?
- How am I going to reward users for participating?
- How am I going to make money off this-besides banner advertising?
If you can’t answer these questions, you still may have a social network. But I don’t think you have a good business model.
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Is providing the opportunity to “connect” still enough of a benefit to get people to join and keep coming back?
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Comments 5
June 19th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Jason,
I agree. People are starting them, just to start them.
My biggest gripe so far, is people starting them and not being prepared for traffic. Twitter’s overcapacity issues and issues with other social sites deters me from using them AND signing up for new ones assuming that they will have the same issues.
Keep up the great posts!
June 19th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
I agree, with all of the web toolkits and sites like Ning, there are basically no barriers to entry for social networks.
If I were going to start a social network I would try to integrate features like delicious and stumbleupon links/bookmarking to draw users in that way. And open up as much content to the public as possible. I don’t like having to sign up and register for an account before I can see what’s going on.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Jason,
I think you are dead on in this post. There needs to be more than the ability to connect, because people already do that on the twin towers (Facebook an Myspace). So there needs to be greater value, or some distinguishing applications which drive users to the site.
September 8th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Jason,
Can you do a feature post weighing the benefits / decision making process behind choosing to do an independent niche site vs. an application on Facebook, etc.
Jake.