There is no question that the new Facebook platform is going to have a massive impact on the market. A FB app and integration is going to become an essential part to any social site and startup, just like the rage of widgets was middle of last year. With only days under its belt, we’ve already seen one massive success with iLike’s music service. Despite all of this I do think that there will be challenges for developers and entrepreneurs ahead: Overcrowding With massive popularity, the Facebook platform is going to get flooded with new applications. It won’t be long until...

Social Networks are often criticized as having a hard time at being profitable. Most are supporting themselves in one of two ways, traditional online advertising, or a subscription model. But I wanted to briefly take a look at some other ways that social networks are trying to increase their revenue streams. Virtual Gifts The next largest monetization method taking form behind advertising and subscriptions are virtual gifts. With the massive success of virtual gifts in foreign markets (i.e. Cyworld) a lot of US properties have started experimenting. Most notably Facebook recently launched their...

There has been a lot of press around how OpenID, the effort to create the single-sign on, is gaining traction by adding some major players such as AOL and Digg to their pre-existing roster of Yahoo, LiveJournal, and Wikipedia. Having a single sign on is only the first step. How about a single portable buddy list? Taking OpenID one step further and allowing people to have a single buddy list does three things: 1. Solves a huge problem for new online communities by allowing people to quickly create their network. 2. On the flip side, solves the huge barrier for people who don’t want to...

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...

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...

I took the time to watch the CommunityNext presentation from the Threadless founders. While the video has a lot of good things in there, there was one point that I thought was above and beyond the rest. An online community is all about fun. When dealing with consumers, if using and interacting with your website and community isn’t fun, then people won’t stick around. Take a look at some of the most successful online communities. Myspace is a piece of shit, but users have fun making their profiles look like pink barf, posting wacky pictures, and setting Celine Dion as the music...

Everyone knows that YouTube recently announced that they will soon be sharing revenue of in-video ads with users. While most people think it is a bad move for YouTube, I think it could be great if they execute it correctly. Yesterday I talked about how Money As A Motivator is ineffective in building a dedicated community. However, YouTube already has built the community to a critical mass. Just as we have seen with Myspace and Facebook, as long as you have critical mass, you can implement features that piss off your users (aka Facebook feed), and still be fine. Despite this, I think the smartest...

I have seen a lot of business ideas lately using money as a way to motivate users to submit content and participate in the community. But I keep asking myself, is money really a viable option to build a social network or online community? Here are some examples of companies that are using, or have used, money as a motivator: Revver and MetaCafe – Advertising sharing based on the number of views a users video gets. Dovetail.tv – Pays $.10 every time someone downloads a users video. Yelp – Paid users $1 per post at the beginning. No longer do...

UPDATE: Some really interesting conversation about this is taking place in the comments. Anyone else who has an opinion, please chime in! I have stated a few times that without Facebook I probably wouldn’t still be in contact with half of the people I currently am from college and high school. It provides an easy and informal way to stay up to date with friends. Despite this, I sometimes just can’t comprehend the way that some people interact with Facebook. Take for example this post I found on someone’s wall readable to hudreds of people: “[Name], Dont forget to always...

We have already seen some politicians use sites such as MySpace and Facebook to reach out to the younger voters, but recently Hillary Clinton posted the question, “Based on your own family’s experience, what do you think we should do to improve health care in America?” on Yahoo! Answers. Joshua Porter at Bokardo has some good comments on this. This action really shows the power of social media. At time of posting there have been about 36,000 responses to the question, with the majority of them being quality responses. But this presents another problem. Who in the world...