Building the perfect social network

Andy’s note:  Since it’s always nice to have a change of pace every once in a while, I asked my Plurk friend and fellow technology enthusiast Evan Doyle, from www.evandoyle.org, to write a special guest post for this blog.  Hopefully you’ll enjoy Evan’s special featured post!

There are countless social networking sites on the web today, but only a few make the front page. Everyone has heard of Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Plurk, Digg, and Pownce, but what is it exactly that makes these sites so well known?  Here are what I believe to be the four aspects required for a successful social networking site:

Not Just a Profile

When you are on a good social website you never just see a personal profile and that’s all– there’s always a way to see what other users are doing. For Facebook it’s the News Feed, for Plurk the timeline, and for Twitter and Pownce it’s the posts or updates from you and your friends.  On the best social sites your homepage isn’t your profile, either; this is one of MySpace’s biggest flaws and one of Facebook’s largest assets. When you log into MySpace you see your profile and a few extra perks, but with Facebook, Plurk, Twitter, and Pownce you see direct interaction with the other users, not merely your profile.

Rewards

Having rewards for activity on social sites is key, as well, because they bring people back. Everyone wants to be one of the best, and I mean everyone; online popularity can be more important to some than popularity in the workplace or at school. Twitter’s ‘followers’ feature is golden; it makes people strive to be followed.  Users achieve this goal by promoting their user name and Twittering nonstop, leaving these individuals online for hours at a time.  Plurk’s Karma system is ingenious, too, seeing that it can go up and down, but the best thing is not simply having a high Karma but rather getting the reward for achieving certain Karma levels.  Users are rewarded with emoticons and profile options and are even featured on Plurk’s homepage if they’re at the top of the Karma chain.  It’s important that having the most followers or having the highest Karma is a reachable goal, though.  Plurk has a system that when you have Karma that is below 40ish you get a lot more Karma at each update, but when you start getting higher on the ‘Karma ladder’ the increase of Karma grows less and less each update. This gives young Plurkers hope at the beginning, and by the time the Karma increases start to lower they are already addicted. With Facebook and most other social sites the reward is popularity, or, in other words, friends.

Simplicity

This is a short, important, and simple premise to follow when building your own social network. Keep everything baseline and make every feature require one or two clicks at the most.  Using clean lines, simple color schemes, and an eye-pleasing design are easy ways to keep your site simple.  When a new user comes onto your site, you want him or her to feel like they already know how to do everything; they may pick up a few tips here and there, but you still want to keep features to a minimum. Here are some strongly-encouraged features that should be kept at all cost:

• Friends vs. fans: make it easy for the user to determine if they want a person to be their friend or fan.  Usually a friend has more privileges than a fan.
• Favorites: being able to tag a post as a favorite is something I use daily, and many people skip over this, but keeping track of things is a lot easier with such tools.  Stay away from the 5-star system, it gets messy.
• Comments: comments on certain posts is a must, maybe even commenting on a comment like with Digg’s system. Another thing Digg has going for it is the ability for a user to say if the comment is good or bad (digg/bury); a similar system might be an extra boost for your site but is not a necessity.
• Profile picture and bio:  just a simple little area that can be dedicated to personal info from the user.  Make sure not to go overboard with this, we still want the main things on the page to be interaction between users. Try implementing a system where you can have links to other profiles from other sites, too.

Publicity

This is probably the hardest part about creating a social network, but there is a way to get users, and a way to do it well: use other social networks.  I know it sounds crazy, but before your release make sure you have accounts on the major network sites with many friends or followers, but never spam your site. Ask people to try it personally in a non-generic email and ask them to ask their friends, or ask them to post about it on whichever social site they use.  Advertise your release weeks in advance, giving little tidbits of information to keep the hungry satisfied.  Provide blog reviewers with access to your site before the public launch, which usually makes them feel special, encouraging a positive review. Most importantly, consider a beta with an invite-only basis.  Give out invites to the first 500-1500 who sign up on the mailing list, and then give invites to the people who helped you out on the social sites.  With each one of these invites, provide 25 or so invites the beta tester can email out to other prospective users.  Create a demand for your site, as people scramble for invites, trust me.  Being personal is key; maintaining a relationship, even through email, is important.

Good luck with your social site if you decide to go ahead and create one– anyone can do it with the right idea, planning, and demand.  People always want new sites to use.  Just make sure you have a base before you launch, or else your site will most likely sit dead in the water.

If you’d like to get in touch with Evan or send him a beta invitation to your newly-inspired social network, you can reach him at his blog, www.evandoyle.org; his social network accounts at Twitter, Plurk, Flickr, or Pownce; or by e-mail.

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