The staggering potential of social networking to draw traffic to a Web site cannot be underestimated. The “viral” nature – the ability to start with a small user base and spread to the users’ friends – is a vital component.
Before a social networking site can be a behemoth like MySpace and FaceBook, however, it needs to start small and grow. The growth stage is the most crucial part of the lifespan on a social networking site. FaceBook, for example, started off by only accepting members who were in educational institutions, enforcing this policy by requiring an e-mail address ending in the “.edu” domain.
Friendster, on the other hand, accepted registrations from anyone. But today, FaceBook is, undisputedly, larger and more popular than Friendster. Why? In the fight for users, what attracted them to FaceBook instead of Friendster, when choosing a social network? Contrary to common sense, it may actually have been FaceBook’s policy of restricted access that may have helped it to win the war.
Allowing only those users with a “.edu” e-mail address to register created an air of exclusivity. If you had one and registered, you were part of the “in” crowd, and you didn’t need to be concerned about the “other” people intruding on your little slice of the internet. Although long forgotten, a similar phenomenon was noticed by others: the exclusivity of Gmail, when it first started, prompted a craze of Gmail-invitation Web sites where people could offer to barter, trade, buy, or sell Gmail invitations. Clearly, exclusivity is tied to desirability. It boils down to supply and demand, once again.
Furthermore, FaceBook started with a niche target audience. A big niche. A niche that was composed entirely of the most Internet-savvy generation ever. It gained its foothold, and then did what social networking sites do best: it networked.
The key component was direction while it established its core user-base. By choosing a specific target audience they were able to grow at a steady (and steadily increasing) pace until their presence was well-established. At that point, when they started accepting new users with ANY e-mail address, they entered the mainstream, and started achieving the current level of success that they enjoy today.
That’s something to keep in mind if you are considering establishing an industry-wide social networking site to communicate among like-minded people, establish yourself as an expert in your field, or drive qualified visitors to your Web site.
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Tags: facebook • Friendster • myspace • social networking
Copyright © 2008 by IdeaStar. All rights reserved.
October 29th, 2008 at 7:55 am
I think like your good Gmail example shows, exclusivity can really help push a lot of products or services. People do not want to be left out and conversely, people want to feel like they are special or part of something few others can have.
I have to admit that it really makes me wonder how our business could leverage this concept of exclusivity. :)