Social networks. These days they come in more flavors than a pint of ice cream. Most of them, unfortunately, are almost as uninteresting. The real problem is that most entrepreneurs that design social networks miss the point. When trying to recreate a complex sociological structure on the internet, sometimes you need to step back and think about what you are really doing. Lets do that right here.

So You Want To Build A Social Network

The first question that you should be asking yourself is why. Why have you decided, for example, that Dog walkers need a social space? Think about it for a minute. Is there any value in throwing together some Smarty Templated internet masterpiece around a subject that draws no additional value from the web? Dog walking is not improved by putting a global network around it. Before you say, “Sure it is, dogs walkers would love to be able to talk to each other about walking dogs,” I’m going to break the news to you — no they wouldn’t.

Dog walkers like to walk dogs, often times in parks or down city streets. Time spent talking to you online is time that might otherwise be spent calling up another pet owner to take a hike with their canine friends.

My point is this. Social networks should only be created when you have a very specific value proposition and you hope to bring people together around this commonality. Lets look at an example.

Facebook

If you weren’t born in the 80s, you may have a difficult time understand why Facebook became as large as it did. The reason, despite what you may believe, can be summarized in three letters: AOL. AOL introduced the concept of a walled “internet” to adolescents the world over. Most people who spent their formative years in the mid to late 90s will fondly remember how the introduction of AIM completely changed the social landscape.

AIM was to that era what Facebook is to now. It was a service that allowed people to communicate easily with their friends and provide public information for their peers. This public information came in the form of the AIM profile, which became more and more elaborate as the service evolved.

What does this have to do with Facebook? Facebook, despite what anyone says, is built on the backs of this AIM generation. These are people who, unlike Dog walkers, draw a great deal of value from being able to easily communicate with each other about topics of interest. Not only that, the idea of the “Buddy List” almost mirrors the friends list on Facebook. The transfer of identity from one service to another was simple for even the least tech savvy of net users.

What Does It All Mean?

It means that before you try to put together the next big social network, you should keep the following checklist in mind. If your answer to any of these questions is no, then it is time to go back to the drawing board.

Can you explain your value proposition in one sentence? Facebook lets college students (the AIM generation) connect to each other to plan parties, post pictures, and otherwise make socializing easier.

Does your target demographic already use the internet for casual communication? Social networks designed for people who are either too busy, too luddite or too uninterested in using the internet are doomed to failure from the start. Just because a niche is large enough for a fan club, does not mean that it will scale to a viable business.

Is there a similar product on the web that you can compare yourself too? Facebook can be compared to MySpace, Twitter can be compared to AIM, Digg can be compared to Slashdot. Social networks are, at best, meta-products. They take an existing idea and wrap a new layer of interaction around them. If you can’t come up with a Web 1.0 comparison, it is very likely that the niche you are targeting is incorrect.

Are you simplifying life instead of making it more complicated? What all good social networks have in common is that they ease social transactions. If your network has a bus load of features that only serve to add complexity to your users lives, it is time for you to rethink what purpose your product actually serves.

Web 2.0

When people look at Facebook or YouTube the first thing they think is often, “Hey, I could have done that.” What they are forgetting is that both of these products were not the first to tackle the idea of social networking around content, they were just the first ones to do it correctly. All ideas are about 10% technology and 90% implementation.

There are plenty of fantastic ideas for social networks out there, but the problem is there is also a huge back catalog of failures in waiting. Before you add yourself too that list, think about what you are really trying to accomplish for your users and plan your product around that.

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