Building a Social Web Application : Pitfalls and how to avoid them

Experience is always been my best teacher and after 9 years in this game of which two have been spent researching and implementing new Web 2.0 solutions, its always nice to recap what ive learned along the way. Its not exactly the harvard biz review of anything but its definitely the best Dummy’s Guide to running SNS (which is sometimes the difference between success and failure).

1. Attention momentum: Dont underestimate the fact that you will need to acquire and sustain users thru some form of addictive functionality that keeps users coming back. 
2. Do a few things well: Dont focus on too many things or spread your resources too thin. (A few games of Age of Empires will teach you the same lesson).
3. Set a goal for yourself once you are convinced of your vision and execute to plan ( do not deviate). Alterations can happen once a stable framework has been created for your web service to run on. What makes google so formidable is that they never stop trying to be the best.
4. Transparency with users is key. Wired Magazing recently carried an article which talked about the new breed on CEOs who were finding that the only way to keep users after a service outage or mis-step is to be as open as possible about the problem and how it is being rectivied. It also talked about Google as a “reputation system” which i will reserve for another blog.
5. Build on your Knowledge Base by sharing other users experiences with the community. Both eBay and Flickr do this well.
6. Resist the urge to focus on how users will create value for other users by tagging, rating or syndicating their content. Instead focus on making it painless for a standalone user to use your webservice. (This may sound counter intuitive but it worked for YouTube).
7. Enable recommendations and Exploit Syndication Opportunities in the form of widgets or granular content. Its the only way your service will grow outside of itself.
8. Before you build a community around a theme. Its a good idea to explore how the community functions offline first. This insight is not compromisable and extemely valuable.
9. No Pla(i)n no Gain. If you dont have a business plan other than growing your user base its more or less over for you. Meditate on the “Monetize” Mantra.
10. See the wood for the trees (Focus on the Big Picture). When you are a company that has scarce resources the war is generally won based on the battles you have chosen to fight. Many startups fail to see the larger war they are fighting and  instead focus on a few explosive moments, resulting in burnout. (this comes in the form of “MASS MARKET AD CAMPAIGN FAUX PAS and putting too many eggs in one basket)
11. Last but not least beware of the Penny Gap Trap. (this builds on point 9 alittle)

 

~ by koc1978 on August 9, 2007.