Is Facebook A Threat To A New Social Community Today?

[filmdesire 0]

hi guys,

 

I have been considering launching a social network for students. However a friend of mine asked me how i intend to beat Facebook or the things that i will offer that will actually drag people from Facebook.

 

This really made me think. I do not know if its actually a threat or can be of help.

 

I have read on some forums about ways by which i can advertise on social networks such as facebook and Myspace.

 

Im really confused over this but i think if i have around 10 000 users on my network i'd be more than happy BUT does this mean i've to offer something that is really unique or just target a niche like what i wanted to do?

You said it! Although many social networks are general, the facebook script allows integration with applications which has endless possibilities! Recently facebook boasted 250 MILLION users worldwide. That is a HUGE amount of people, and a fairly big fraction in the internet world!

 

What you have to do is think of something new, be ready to spend money, you cant do it yourself even though you think you can. A business model is essential, something facebook didn't intend to do to begin with! So get there fast, draw a mindmap - scrap it and start again!

 

When you think of something unique, new and not on the market, all you have to do is write down the idea, post it to yourself to self-copyright it. In the USA I dont know how it'd work, I think you may have to pay a small fee to register the idea.

 

You need to know programmers more intelligent than you are (face the facts - if you're doing this as a hobby, you're probably not up to a professional standard) - seek professionalism in web design and graphic design. TIP: To evade fees seek STUDENTS & GRADUATES who are looking for a real idea! Often you will realise people behind facebook, twitter, spotify, grooveshark, and many other services are VERY YOUNG - and VERY NEW to the industry, why? Because they are students/graduates or small time workers trying to make it big. YOUTUBE FOR EXAMPLE!

 

Steve Chen FOR INSTANCE:

 

WIKI

He attended John Hersey High School and Illinois Math and Science Academy, later attending University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was an early employee at PayPal, where he met Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim.

... A student in early employment... eventually meeting up with other small employees JAWED KARIM and CHAD HURLEY (JAWED who was a Graduate student, Stanford University working for paypal, HURLEY who was a small time graphics designer for PAYPALS LOGO)

 

The saying goes, its not what you know, its WHO you know. That's utter bullhockey!

IT IS WHAT YOU KNOW. BUT WHO YOU KNOW TAKES YOUR IDEA THAT EXTRA MILE, AND COOPERATION / WELL INTEGRATED TEAM WORK - no matter how small the group is (i.e. youtube only had THREE MEMBERS to begin with) is ESSENTIAL

 

 

Good Luck! And dont pull yourself down by putting writing that you'd be happy with just '10,000' members, pitch HUGE and you'll end up pitching that baseball near that bigger goal!

Edited December 15, 2009 by filmdesire (see edit history)

[webishqiptar 0]

But you must be creative. You need lot of money to get into business. Facebook and other social networks have been around for several years and now are famous and earning a lot. You need a fortune to beat them.

[filmdesire 0]

But you must be creative. You need lot of money to get into business. Facebook and other social networks have been around for several years and now are famous and earning a lot. You need a fortune to beat them.

Disagree... Because Youtube and Facebook owners had very little money to their name compared to what they have now. It will cost money, but is easily afforded with graduates today.

Training and finding professionals is your only cost.

[Strikee 1]

It's very hard to get noticed as a simple webmaster starting a big social network. Even with perfect seo , perfect hosting and lots of publicity it stil won't be hard.But if you DO succed the compete with the biggest ones in the industry the profits would be huge. Keep in mind that every big site from today was once small and growing , that should give some hope to the new starters.You need alot of ambition to start something like this knowing who you're up to :PCheers.

[Rael IAK 0]

It seems the last several posts have been about how to make it "rich" with a social networking site. It seems to me that africa is on record (more than once) as stating that what he wants to make is a site for Africans .... not necessarily for 250 million users worldwide.

 

I don't see anything wrong with this. Maybe being a millionaire is not one of his goals in life. I'm not a particularly materialistic person so it's not one of mine.

 

africa, I think you have a good point when you say that you are not really competing with FaceBook and MySpace. You are competing for people's time. Everyone has only so much recreational time available and a lot of options on how to spend it. ANY social networking site is competing with MMORPGs, game consoles, TV and DVD Rental Stores (among other things) for that time. I started playing an on-line game about a year and a half ago just to see what one was like since I started hearing about WoW EVERYWHERE, lol. It wasn't WoW I played, by the way, and the game itself was nothing to write home about but I enjoyed the social aspect of it well enough to stay active. I'm not real active any more. I find myself spending lots more time in Xisto forums . The point is, I like the caliber of conversation that goes on here so this will get a good chunk of my "spare time" for the foreseeable future.

 

As far as what goes into your site goes africa, you would know better than me. What do you think your potential audience would like? You could always try asking some of the people that you already know what they would enjoy.

 

As far as FaceBook (or anything else) being a "threat" goes, I doubt it. When my kids were younger (yeah, it appears I'm a fair bit older than the average Trapper) there was some fairly serious discussion among some parents as to whether Pokemon spelled the end of civilization as we know it, lol. Obviously, it didn't. It was one in an endless line of fads. "Everybody" was on MySpace at one point. Then "everyone" is on Facebook. Next will be Twitter (or something else).

 

I can't think of any good reason that africa shouldn't just do what he thinks would be fun or rewarding to him. Even if only a few hundred people end up spending their time on his site on a regular basis, THEY will consider it "successful".

 

My two myCENTs worth

Edited March 28, 2010 by Rael IAK (see edit history)

[T X 0]

If you want word to travel fast, you can ask a very successful YouTube channel or something of the sort if they can put the word out about it.Advertising, well...I can't help you there since I always ignore ads.Tell your friends and have them tell their friends and so on until it becomes big.

[kosmik 0]

A good way to look at this issue is to view the state of Facebooks Security and Privacy protection. The state of this determines the safety of users on FB, because to many crawler sites such as Pipl can easily find the basic profile information excluding password for Facebook accounts, its scary to think about it.

[Indego_Media 1]

Hi,FACEBOOK? You should be more focused on what you are going to offer to your members. the opportunity for you to genuinely offer a new community access point with a point of difference.What is it that you hope to be able to offer your members should be your first point of difference that they will not be able to gain from another solution?Once you have decided what will set you apart from the other network solutions then you will have something to work with.You will then need to decide how your members will interact with each other, what and how they will interact will become a major draw card for your solution.You may also want to consider why and how often you will need to have your members coming back to your site. Or will they interact via an email like network that runs through your site?These are all the base things that you will need to evaluate before you will know if your site is going to work.Forget FACEBOOK its no threat if you have something different to offer you members and potential visitors In the mean time use FACEBOOK to get traffic. You?d be surprised how quickly things can grow and develop on the web. Have fun with it and let me know if you need any help with your future direct. CheersJase