A very common question I get is how to gain users, and more importantly, how to get to that point of critical mass where a community becomes self sufficient in viralness. This process has never been easy, and contrary to popular belief, most successful communities did not grow organically. As time has passed, and the number of web 2.0 companies and social networks has increased rapidly. This has increased the difficulty of gaining critical mass for a couple reasons: 1. The amount of noise in the market is much greater. More noise means that it is tougher for your social network to gain visibility...

There is no shortage of mom niche social networks; Maya’s Mom, Mothers Click, MommyBuzz just to name a few. But there is one that has clearly taken a solid lead, CafeMom.com. I had a conversation with Matthew Zarzecki, one of the founders of CafeMom, and they are happy to announce that they’ve reached a milestone of over 1 million page views a day! The astounding part is that they have only been around since November 2006 (approx 5 months). CafeMom had a slight advantage to get ahead in this space by leveraging traffic from one of their other properties, ClubMom.com. But they...

In a lot of ways, social networks are becoming what forums were during web 1.0. While becoming a lot less popular, there are still hundreds of extremely active forums out there on the web. When I say active, I don’t mean a few thousand members and twenty posts a day. I mean ACTIVE. For example: Gaia Online - Forum about anime role playing Approx 6.6 million members, 967 million posts, Top 1000 Alexa Ranking Vault Network Boards - Forum about role playing games 626,000 Members, 112 Million posts, with 6,000 posts added daily Forum Auto - Forum about cars (in French) 350,000 Members, 20...

I have been closely following the new contact management system being developed by 37Signals called Highrise. I am extremely anxious to get a beta invite, as I have been looking for a solution like this for awhile. To read a little about some of the awesome features go here and here. While I have no idea if 37 Signals is thinking in this direction, I do believe the system could have serious social networking potential. I’ve said before that I consider LinkedIn to basically be an enhanced contact management tool i.e.the main use is to add people to your network that you have already met...

5 months ago I posted how the social networking needs of people dramatically change once they graduate college. There is a huge generational gap that has currently still not been filled. There are multiples SN’s that have captured the highschool crowd, including myyearbook.com and myspace. No one would argue that Facebook has fully captured the college crowd. And LinkedIn currently dominates with professionals 30 year and older. But as you see, there is a huge gap in between Facebook and LinkedIn. For most people, Facebook’s purpose dramatically changes once graduated. It becomes...

Looks like Virb snuck one past me, and the rest of blogosphere. They have quietly launched a new version of their beta social network. They are currently only allowing a limited number of sign ups each day (334 left today at time of writing). From the front page it looks like they have a lot of stuff coming. I will have more about this later as I get a better chance to play around with the site. In the meantime, go grab one of the limited sign ups. [tags]Social Networking, Social Network, Virb, Online Community, Music, Purevolume, Brian Balfour[/tags]

A common questions is, what makes a good social network or online community? Obviously there are many different things that vary widely depending on the type and subject matter of the community. But to speak very generally I wanted to share 3 broad characteristics that I think great social networks share. Personality/Identity The best of social networks have their own personality or identity, just like a living being. Spend some time on a social network such as Yelp or Vimeo, and you will start to get a sense that the site is fun, creative, and humorous. Visit a site like LinkedIn, and you...

While I think some of the media hype about the “dangers” of social networks has started to die down, I still always hear questions about the responsibility of the companies behind social networks with regards to privacy. Social networks and online communities are in the business of providing a platform for users to communicate by sharing content, and ultimately their lives. They are in a sense, communication platforms, just like telephone towers are for cell phones, and the US postal service is for mail. Most (or at least the good ones) online communities don’t interfere with...

The 37Signals blog posted part one of a great conversation about community between 2 of the founders from each Vimeo and Threadless. If you didn’t already know, Vimeo is a spin off video sharing site from the founders of CollegeHumor.com and Connected Ventures. I highly regard Zach Klein of Vimeo as one of the most creative and innovative young entrepreneurs out there. He has a great eye and mind for building community focused websites. Jakob Lodwick (Vimeo), Jacob Dehart (Threadless), and Jefferey Kalmikoff (Threadless) are the other excellent participants

With all the buzz around social networking and online communities, I’m not surprised that many large corporations want to get in on the action. Unfortunately, many just don’t get it. Social Networking or an online community is not something you can just “put a few good people on it for a couple months.” There is no easy “if you build it, they will come” solution. Furthermore, building a community from scratch, is a much different beast then trying to integrate community into an existing product or service. Too many companies (partially including my own,...