My virtual pad with Dandy Warhols

What are challenges in designing for social media/software/networks?

A former colleague of mine sent me and her LinkedIn colleagues a note asking us what we thought were the greatest challenges in designing for social media/software/networks. Definitely a timely question. I was about to post my answer on LinkedIn, when I chickened out because I didn't want to throw another critical post out there on Yahoo -- there are far too many these days.

But based upon her reaction, and because my blog has been totally dead, I thought maybe I'd repost my answer here. After all, my blog audience isn't quite as large as LinkedIn's member base, so no harm no foul. :)

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What are the greatest challenges in designing for social media/software/networks?
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Answer varies based upon media vs software vs networks, but my general answer wouldn't be much different than if the question were centered around building compelling online services vs social products.

The challenge? Balancing a) providing unique value/purpose with b) providing features/services that drive viral growth and deep engagement.

No brainer?

Case in point. During the design of Yahoo 360, Yahoo listened very carefully to customers through research. (btw, disclosure, I was part of that team and built the requirements for the product) Customers told Yahoo they didn't want another Friendster because they didn't trust the concept of adding a random friend for a random purpose. They liked the promise of social networks (toward building/managing meaningful relationships). So Yahoo decided to focus hardcore on building privacy and trust-fostering controls and abilities. As a result, Yahoo 360 became very good at building/managing trusted relationships. But by default, those relationships involve smaller segments of your network (how evenly strong are your relationships with all 5,000 of your MySpace buddies vs your 3 best friends?). As a result of the smaller segments, you had smaller social hubs. As a result of the smaller social hubs, you lost much of the viral growth capabilities that drove other networks -- once you're connected, no reason to invite a large group of other folks. And without some really compelling or unique value, why bother telling other folks about it?

It's not that you didn't have tools to invite people -- you just didn't have something worth spreading the word about to a massive network of people -- only instead your closest of friends.

Focused in purpose, but not viral.

Don't need to get into the massive value dilution that occurred by forcefeeding platform integration into the product when customers didn't want that -- that's another story.

It's easy to go the other way -- focusing on viral growth, but not really serving an overt purpose or providing unique value. I'm not sure that this is the case for MySpace or Facebook, but you could argue that long-term, they may face a similar fate as Friendster if they don't provide that unique, lasting value. They're great in driving viral behavior, but they certainly haven't fostered unabashed customer loyalty (witness the latest migration from MySpace to Friendster that will only grow in velocity; also witness the growing level of disinterest in app-adding mania on Facebook by the social influencers and early adopters).

Again, these challenges aren't unique to social products and services. If you build anything, and it doesn't provide a unique need, and doesn't provide mechanisms to drive deep engagement, and allow you to leverage that through word-of-mouth to grow, I think you may find lasting success challenging.

Now, if you're building to flip really fast, throw out everything I just said. :)

Team-building, the return of fat and happy

Been a while since I posted here. Awfully tardy. I also have a library book from 1986 about how Coca Cola got its start. I’m holding out for the world record on library fines. I have no intentions of doing the same with this blog.

What have I been up to? Many things:
1) Building a center of excellence
2) Getting the right tools in-place
3) Keeping the bus moving along

Some observations:

One of my favorite things to do is (re)build a team. Sure it’s always tough when you decide that not everyone’s going to come along for the ride, but the exciting part for it is getting people refocused on their new charter, and even moreso finding new rockstar talent.

I love hiring bright, motivated, hungry, aggressive, creative folks to come in and energize a team. I’ve hired three people in the last six weeks who fit this build, and have another three in the hopper. It’s becoming an exciting time (and I’m looking forward to getting a little out of the weeds).

Been hiring people through variety of sources. Have found a couple recruiters who have a knack for getting some good talent. Continue to find that Craigslist is terrible, as are most other job sites. Creative Hotlist has good talent, but not enough web folks. My best source of qualified leads continues to be LinkedIn. Not sure if that’s because I have a big network, and likely better visibility, or what.

The one bad thing about LinkedIn though is that inevitably after each job posting, I get about 20 resumes from Eastern Europe or India from folks currently in hard-core IT hardware jobs desperately seeking a way out. Wish I could help them all, but there are a lot of extremely talented local folks right now.

Media-buying

One other thing that I’ll rap on in an upcoming post. I’ve been managing a media campaign for the last few weeks as I conduct some tests ahead of the arrival of our full-time media buyer. There’s a pretty stark contrast from the fat-and-happy networks (e.g., MySpace) and the scrappier, performance-based networks (e.g., Zango, Vibrant).

For example, with one, you actually get service, such as returned emails and phone calls. I’ll let you guess which one is doing the good job.

Somewhat astonishing as you’d think there’d be some learning from the previous advertising fallout, but the sales teams are so young that few of them have any of that experience or knowledge. Well, as you might expect, the fat and happy networks perform pretty terribly with direct response, and so I wouldn’t be surprised to see certain ad dollars dry up unless they shore up that side of the house, or perhaps just focus on branded campaigns (a likely emphasis).

More on this to come.

Daily Strength

Would be remiss without giving a shoutout to one of my friends, on his birthday no less, on the start of his new venture, Daily Strength.

Doug Hirsch hired me at Yahoo back in 1998, and we've stayed in touch through the trials and tribulations during and post-Yahoo. Doug's an entrepreneur at heart, and has started about a million businesses since leaving. Daily Strength is my favorite by far.

Daily Strength, also cofounded by some other great ex-Yahoos, Josh DeFord and Lars Nilsen, is focused on providing support communities focused on health and behavioral issues. Part social network, part Questions and Answers, part profiles, Daily Strength is a great place for people to vent and support each other through any personal challenge.

In my work in Yahoo Communities, health support was always a big area. I'm glad to see Doug and Co. focus on really building the tools and services to help people in these communities learn and soothe each other through all things good and bad.

They've just gotten started, and already they're doing some very profound things. These kinds of services, where you've really made an impact on people's lives, and in some cases, help them get through another day, are the kinds of services I'll always be proud to see. That's what I think online communities are all about.

Congrats to the team on their launch, and on recent financing. Best wishes, and Happy Birthday, Stinkypants.

Next Stop...

It's been a great few weeks!

Recently saw an expansion of Kram, LLC, which has been successful, although not necessarily great for sleep. Additionally, have spent time catching up with friends and a slew of new ventures out there.

I recently left BetZip in search of greener pastures and found a ton of great ideas, businesses and savvy people out there relentlessly pursuing whatever it is they pursue. I talked with more than a dozen companies, and saw things from all over the gambit. Some interesting takeaways:

1. Google has a pretty interesting interview process. Very deliberate and good at determining analytical prowess, although perhaps not as thorough as evaluating other success factors.

2. The high number of "Web 2.0" companies out there with nothing more than AJAX and a copycat application seem to be slowing down. At least, they're not attracting a lot more money.

3. Old companies with old ideas still manage to attract some pretty smart people...however, a lot of them seem destined to repeat their mistakes ... it's easier to purge a company's team and interpersonal issues, but it's harder to purge bad assumptions and legacy beliefs.

4. Fast often doesn't mean focused.

5. There are many good ideas out there waiting to get a seed round, but are hung up on inhibitions or a lack of contacts, which limits their chance for success.

6. There is a new breed of companies that are sucessfully emerging from their chrysalis of seed rounds, and are looking to grow from $10M to $100M. Those folks are seeking experienced senior leaders to complement the core team.

I'll write more in the coming weeks about the experience, but I've decided to join a great company that fits the last bulletpoint.

I'm joining iWin, a leading casual game publisher/developer, as its VP of Marketing and Product Management. I've know the iWin guys for a while, when I was at Yahoo, working in partnership. They're great folks, with some great content, and an excellent strategy to pull away from the rest of the pack and really take off.

These guys are filled with a lot of smart, passionate, and creative people. I'm really looking forward to joining their ranks and helping the team get to the next level.

More to come!

Google Thoughts

I recently had lunch at the Googleplex with some friends and former colleagues of mine. With the YouTube and Facebook buzz in the news lately, there's been a ton of different comparisons between Google and Yahoo resurfacing. Thought I'd throw my rambling two cents into the mix.

Google 2006 sorta feels like Yahoo 2000 (maybe because so many former Yahoos are there :) ). Yahoo 2006 feels like Excite 2000. I'd love to know what feels like Google 1999, but whether it's Facebook, YouTube, or someone, I don't know.

On visiting the Plex, it's hard not to feel like you're in something dynamic and charged. Something fueled with a higher purpose even. Sure, there's the requisite ultimate frisbee match, a landmine field of candy and snacks every 100 feet, and whiteboards charting world domination, but you just feel like these guys are brimming with ideas filtered through a relentless customer focus. They don't seem to be bogged down by inordinate processes, just a desire to build things that serve customers and grow the business.

I'm not sure I'm ready to chalk it all up to market-leader arrogance, because I don't sense from talking with folks that Google thinks it's got it all figured out. Instead, I think it realizes that it has a long way to improve and wants to do whatever it can to get there. It may not be brash arrogance (although any company is going to have some of that), but instead just the confidence that they will eventually figure it out because they don't feel they're encumbered by the braces that have crippled so many other big companies trying to solve similar customer/business problems.

That seems simple enough, right? Yahoo was exactly the same way in the beginning, too (minus the on-campus infinity pools). It was the big dog on campus, and was just focused on building the best and fastest thing possible for customers (I remember Yahoo's Ash Patel pushing us like crazy to do whatever we can to make the first product to host customer images on Yahoo (Clubs) as fast as possible, and to model out the impact of every additional KB on storage, bandwidth and customer download speed, probably moreso to remind us not to forget the user impact).

The press says Google is, like Yahoo was, fat-and-happy arrogant, especially in the sales force. I don't know if that's true, but hopefully it's not. There are so many small customers out there taking advantage of AdWords and AdSense, that I think it'd be easier to turn those guys off by that attitude, than it would be a big customer like NetFlix, Ebay or others. In fact, I'm sure Google can do a lot better here for those small customers. Google also feels like Yahoo 2000 because it's recognizing that it's become a big company, and it struggles with the challenges that big companies face from an execution standpoint (and the employee discontent that comes along with that).

The Yahoo connection today? Just seems to be a series of missteps. Well, that's what the press portrays. The media loves David and Goliath stories, and now Yahoo is the David, although they make it sound like Yahoo can't quite get the stones in the sling. Yahoo's trying to do everything by the book. It says it's user-focused. It has tons of usability. It does all the research groups. But the process now seems to bog down innovation. Innovation committees don't quite hit the mark. Excite felt the same way to me back in the day. They had tons of smart people, but just couldn't quite get the wheels in motion. Down on its luck, and sometimes without good reason why.

Yahoo has some very powerful advantages:

• A core base of users in a broad range of products (Gmail, Gtalk, etc, just don't have the user base yet)
• Rich personalization capabilities
• Deep community platforms that are extending across all the Yahoo verticals

Google in some ways has more delight.

Google Earth is absolutely stunning. Blogger and YouTube are both great ways to engage with user-generated content. Docs and Spreadsheets are perfect for the entry-level office user. Google Analytics is excellent for the small business. AdWords is very powerful, and creating your first campaign is a joy, although the experience can certainly get better. Delight alone doesn't make a business, but it certainly changes the attitudes and perceptions of customers (as anyone in Yahoo who has seen the 2003 customer/brand study knows first-hand).

Google isn't perfect either, though. I still have a hard time organizing my Gmail account. Why aren't user profiles richer throughout Google? Can't you make it easier for me to set up a smart ad campaign if I'm not a professional brand marketer?

That said, I know Google is starting to focus in community and personalization, ramping up its investment, and bringing people in to build out these areas. The new and improved Google Groups I think is a good start here, and I know other Google verticals are examining how to use community and personalization to better meet user needs. Blogger + YouTube represents a strong position into user-generated content. Great for customers and clients. Smart. It recognizes these things provide important value to customers.

For Yahoo, I'm not sure if it's as simple as stripping things down to core user- and business-focus. I don't know how you turn the corner here and regain momentum. It'll take special people, for sure. It'll require empowering them to take risks to do smart things, and breaking out of conventional thought and processes. But the spirit is broken among many of my friends who remain there, and that's just sad to see. There's so much opportunity for Yahoo. I hope it can get up and fight, because that's the only way customers will win in this space. We need strong competition. Yahoo must evolve.

Btw, I wrote this with the new Google Docs (formerly Writely) product. It let me publish to my blog. For a company that doesn't seem to do a lot of network integration, this is a nice step.

KidFromBrooklyn YellowPages

Ben sent me this video from the Kid From Brooklyn. I've never heard of this guy before, but he's frickin insane. Pretty funny video. Interesting concept. Shill out your personality to market a product. Make it funny enough to get viral. And then build a brand for yourself so others will want to do it. Would love to see how viral this really gets...