Univillage - UK Facebook

Univillage is another social network for college (or “uni” in the UK) students. The only difference is that they are going after the international space that Facebook has decided to avoid. While Univillage has a very clean and eye appealing design, along with some solid social networking features, I am currently not seeing anything strikingly unique. With the UK market being dominated by Myspace and Bebo, the ever so common question gets asked; can univillage attract users away? Probably not.

But the reason I am writing about Univillage is to point out an incredibly annoying feature, the mile long sign up process. Univillage’s sign up process is a time consuming 7 step marathon. Have people not learned that internet users are extremely impatient? In my opinion there are three roads that a social network can take:

1. Have an extremely quick sign up process (i.e. Facebook) and lock out most content to un-registered users.

Advantages:

-Creates an interest to see what is on the inside

-Allows people to play around with the site quickly to see if they like it

Disadvantage:

-Could end up in a high percentage of user abandoment. A person registers and then                           doesn’t come back.

2. Open up the site’s content to un-registered users so that people can see what they will be signing up for.  With more knowledge up front about what the site has to offer, more information can be demanded in the sign up process.

Advantages:

-Promotes higher number of quality registered users

-Allows for additional page views from non-registered leisure users

Disadvantages:

-Could run into privacy issues by allowing most content to be viewed
3. Have an extremely quick sign up process and have most content open to un-registered users (i.e. Myspace).

The one thing you can not have is what Univillage has done. Lock out all real content of the site and have a marathon sign up process.  I obviously think that number three is the best option if you can pull it off. But social networks that have a focus around security and privacy are unable to do this.