website, startup-costs, social-networking, product-market-fitI am planning to start a partial proximity based social networking site in next 3-4 months. I am quite worried about the invested it would take, for example
or may be other which I am not sure for now. My area of concerns are as below
I am really confused about the investment and time it will be required to invest in building a completely new social networking site.
Yes I feel so! People in general are fed up but hey! we are talking about some sensible people who are finding Quora reddit and other sites more capable of their intellect and hence living Facebook and other tad sites. But Facebook will eventually become more and more of Marketing and Advertising platform rather than just a “social” network.
Now coming to your idea. Well it can be awesome when you
1.Focus on your local customers and people first rather than spreading your wings where it doesnt even matter.
2.Try to do something like meetup where people withing some locality are more close and meet each other sometimes rather than having long distant group who dont even care when we dont ping them for few weeks.
But the ultimate rule is that people want change and the hard part for everyone is to adapt to that change. So consider that in mind and carry on!
cheers
Rather than generalize, it might be better to survey the target market and find out their sentiments. You may also discover why people don’t like facebook and find out the features that appeal to them. If the respondents do not want social media, then you could either switch to a different demographic of significant size or you could look for a different variety of social media or you could abandon the idea. The data from the survey can also help you figure out what the size of the market is, feasibility and help you make accurate revenue and growth forecasts. This way, you would be making an informed decision and not guess.
It is quite often these days that I hear people make some comment about Facebook or another social network that suggests they are ‘fed up’ with it and wish something better would replace it or make it possible not to have to stay connected to it. Most of these people wouldn’t really have a grasp on the way in which social networking platforms evolve and continue to introduce more features or ways in which users can interact with other users or technologies that are accessed using different equipment or devices. Therefore their opinions of Facebook wouldn’t really change much even if it allowed them ten times the flexibility or functionality than the existing version, because their personal views on social networks are that they are perhaps, no longer ‘optional’ or better for some people to refuse participation and find their lives are no longer affected by these networks. In fact, the social networks used by millions of people every day are the ones we have found to become part of our lives and are almost impossible to ignore as the accepted platforms to connect with other people in the knowledge that most other people would of course be experienced users and be fully equipped to make the most of the latest media/technology available. Furthermore, even if you are not registered on Facebook then you may still find you have a ‘dummy’ profile based on a few photos you were tagged in that means your online identity relies solely on other people’s labels that they are able to use to define anyone else’s identity even without their permission.
Reinventing the wheel is pretty much what you would do if you were learning how to code from scratch and build an identical software program that imitates the real thing but would not be possible to sell or operate without copyright infringement guaranteed! Modified versions of social networks could be useful to invest into or even begin to work on based on open source software such as community.pi or similar product. a totally new approach or model would be better patented as a new invention before making any prototypes or models that would take much more time and effort than expected. building social network sites are actually very difficult, even for the experienced programmer.
IMHO, it all depends how narrow or broad you can define “social”. This is because there are core needs, and concrete needs. The latter fade away in time, the first - are never gone.
Think of an ancient people who had there ‘social network’ equivalents, for instance Greeks. Thousands of years later people still meet, talk and so on, so these are the core needs. Thousands of years later people still eat, wash, walk (but in this case, less, actually), etc.
The concrete need changes in time, and may become significantly less demanded, or be replaced - for example, a need to have a calculator is not a core need.
Facebook and others didn’t reinvent the wheel, discussions are from the very beginning of the internet (you can still use some message broadcasting in Unix systems, for example); yet, the same core need can be offered as a service on infinite number of ways.
If people are bored with Facebook, then it’s very good sign for inventing something relatively new in the field of sociality (i.e. provided that it doesn’t mimic functionality of “previous generation” social networks).
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