Hot answers tagged social-network
14
The key roles in a startup are writing code and finding users. If you can't code, then your role will be to find users. As the one finding users, you will have more say in what the site does.
The question to ask yourself, then, is, "..how will you find users?"
That leads to the next question, which is, "...why will users want to use your site?"
This will ...
12
Check out Hubspot.com. Dharmesh, one of the hosts of this site, is a co-founder. The Hubspot website has a lot of useful marketing information, including free whitepapers on how to leverage Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for your business, and lots of webinars.
Update: They posted a new eBook, How to Use Online Video for Marketing.
9
Its all a numbers game. Be personalable, that is key. I talk to people everywhere, at the gym, grocery store, or out walking the dog.
Be friendly, never argumentative,
and always be selling yourself as a
likeable person.
Be social, hanging out at the same place every Friday will get you near the same crowds.
Join organizations such as your local
...
9
Update: I've expanded this answer into a longer article, Overcoming The Network Effect Barrier.
Even though this answer is for social networks, a lot of this advice could be applied to any business or website as well.
Be The Best At In At Least One Area - Don't be just another clone. There are enough of those. What is your unique selling proposition? ...
8
Aardvark'd: Twelve weeks with Geeks (watch free online)
Four interns are brought into Fog Creek Software's Manhattan office and given 12 weeks to design, develop, debug and ship a computer program that will, among other things, help millions of frustrated users fix their relatives computers via the internet. Boondoggle Films presents a journey through ...
8
Everybody gets so excited about figuring out how to wrangle Google. The answer has been, is, and will ever be to create relevant unique content. From the standpoint of the typical blogger, the Panda release will only be good news. It will punish some of your would-be competitors without hurting you one bit if you make sure of the following:
Using ...
7
I think you're definition of "growing fast enough" is a bit subjective. Here are some things you need to remember:
Creating an online community is extremely hard because you have a chicken + egg problem. You need active users to get new users.
Anyway can come up with an idea, a lot of people can build the site, but few people can focus and persevere long ...
6
Top SAAS developer and designer job sites:
Stack Overflow Careers
"Stack Overflow Careers helps top developers get great jobs at great companies."
Trust factor: you get access to how the developer thinks and helps others
Use: finding a stellar, cornerstone partner/employee
Sortfolio
"Find the right web designer for your next project."
Trust factor: ...
6
One approach is to ensure that your product is sufficiently useful even before the network effect kicks in. The network effect is useful marketing tool, but your product should ideally not rely on it completely.
For example, Microsoft Word is useful for creating internal documents. The network effect kicks in when you send documents to other people, but the ...
6
As a programmer, being honest, I wouldn't lift my pinky finger for 100% equity in a social network. That is absolutely ludicrous, and you won't get any halfway respectable developer to work under those conditions.
Half of it is because there's no money. The other half is because it's equity but in a super crowded, B2C space where it's difficult to make a ...
5
You ARE in a social website already.
Other websites like Facebook or LinkedIn are very similar to this one. They connect people that have the same interests and that want to discuss them with their peers.
One good place to start looking at would be LinkedIn.
There are thousands of LinkedIn groups where people meet to ask questions and find help.
You'll ...
5
Everyone has a very strong idea, which is why so few of the networks go on to be truly profitable.
You may want to start with finding someone with a strong tech background, as that person may know how to reach out to find other developers.
Then, you should probably have a prototype before you approach investors, as it will be important to show what ...
5
Twitter
Facebook
Tweetups
Meetup.com
Start a blog
Read books and blog about what you learn
Read about 'personal brand'
Research who you want to meet and why
Return phone calls and emails
Grab lunch or breakfast with someone new regularly
Start something social. A group breakfast, lunch or happy hour
Read 'Never Eat Alone'
Chamber of Commerce Meetings
...
5
Soon grasshopper -- soon.
First: What is this crowd-sourced funding?
The bill passed! (The "Jobs Bill" apassed in April deregulates the SEC to allow emerging growth companies to raise up to a million dollars a year from an unlimited number of unaccredited investors on public forums. This means that your company can raise money in a whole new way. But it ...
4
I was with you up until the last step. You downgrade me I will immediately leave, and let people know to avoid that site.
Word of mouth to get visitors is helpful, but people are more likely to share negative comments/feelings with people, not only friends, but over Twitter, for example.
If you believe the niche market is going to be successful, your best ...
4
See this - http://developer.mapquest.com/
Since you are starting up I guess it would be best that you don't develop such a thing in house and use 3rd party solutions. I think mapquest lets you do what you are trying to achieve. Also see the Google API - http://code.google.com/apis/maps/
If you want to develop your own solution (which is good for a scalable ...
4
We use Wordpress for our blog. Wordpress already comes built in with a lot of widgets, like categories, archives, etc. Here are some of the additional plugins we use:
Akismet: It’s an excellent spam blocker. Hasn’t missed one yet for us.
All in One SEO Pack: Gives you SEO configuration options.
Google Analyticator: Gives you the ability to use Google ...
4
Try to decide on the basis of the following:
do you have enough content to have seperate blogs for each product?
do you want to increase brand or product awareness?
can you group your products to categories? - this way you could reduce the number of blogs
If you point out what is your primary goal with blogging, it is easier to give an answer.
Generally ...
4
For starters, I would say tone down your pitch a bit. A "Social Networking Tsunami"? The more you hype it, the less plausible it sounds. Just tell people you're working on a social app that has strong potential.
Maybe before people suggest to you how/where to find developers you add some comments on what exactly you think is fair in terms of equity. ...
4
Promote it as a page. It's what google is intending, so it's what they will be adding features for to facilitate it. Facebook has done well with their business pages and you can only suspect Google will follow on the same.
If you do it as yourself, you are going against the intention, I am sure that will bite you at some point.
4
Have you seen this?
From LI help section You can ask us to remove someone from your
Company Page if they don't work at your company or have never worked
at your company.
To file this request, you must have a confirmed company email address
registered to your LinkedIn account.
Provide the following information when you contact us:
The ...
3
Alright first of all, the idea is great. If you read Dharmesh's blog, you'll see how much value a(an) UX/UI/Designer has. You won't need a perfect marketing plan if you have a perfect design, and user interface. One that promotes accessibility. I voted your question up because its a legitimate question and you have a great idea.
Also, I see that you design ...
3
I can make a couple suggestions regarding what is popular in the market right now:
1) ArgyleSocial.com (huge disclosure, I am a co-founder of ArgyleSocial) - We built this tool to help people to manage their social media identities across multiple platforms. Right now we support multiple accounts on twitter and facebook, along with the ability to schedule ...
3
Word of mouth (the old term for "viral", I believe) always works best when your members can easily communicate the benefits your that site has to offer to their contacts. How it is delivered is secondary.
On my site, a large group of users are actors. They can create a "Talent profile" and submit it to different casting opportunities, frequented by other ...
3
Lots of questions in one! You might want to split them up for more specific answers.
For the one in the title, the measure I would use is "active" users, where "active" means not just logins but something like "activity on more than one day, and in the past 30 days."
Or, depending on the goal of the social network, more specific things like messages-sent ...
3
I agree with Jarie. If possible, you should stick with one FB page, Twitter account, etc. Work on branding your company first, then the particular services you offer. In today's noisy landscape, it's tough to get awareness for one thing, let alone three or four. I would figure out what your 'one thing' is - e.g. what makes you different and unique - and ...
3
Here's a little tip that I just recognized today. Look up all the business/entrepreneurship organizations you can, go to all of them. In the average big city, you'll find a couple groups where they complain about why bad things happen to them (inventor clubs strike me as tending towards this), you've find some dead clubs where nothing is happening, and ...
3
I love this question -- it is about adoption of a new solution. It is about the barriers to adopting a new solution from the perspective of the customer experience.
I don't use Delicious. But I am very excited to tell you the reasons why I am not in the active market to switch from the book-marking program I use. I think that they are general adoption ...
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