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http://andrewchenblog.com/2008/05/14/social-network-marketing-getting-from-zero-to-critical-mass/ -
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again mr. chen, nice use of pictures :)
>>imagine there are multiple your user passes through...
actually, i wonder if you may want to consider that it's really your website that is going through phases, and that your engagement strategy should probably be matched to those phases. i've been running across this recently in several sites & apps that operate on a user-generated content basis. in fact, i think you can summarize it briefly like so:
Phase 0: you just launched a very rough alpha & you have no content. you're just testing for basic functionality, and for the most minimal of user interest & activation. optimize for one very basic call-to-action. if you get some traction & don't completely suck, progress to next phase.
Phase I: you just launched a soft beta, and you're still testing for better activation, but now you're collecting content. at this phase, emphasize content contributors who add stuff to your site, and offer them significant emotional incentives to contribute (pimping their content on the home page, perhaps paying them, etc). if you reach a minimum critical mass of content suitable for your viewing audience -- and the content collection UX doesn't suck -- progress to next phase.
Phase II: you have now launched solid beta, perhaps even begun some paid promotion (or not), and the user experience doesn't suck. you should now emphasize referrers / affiliates who are incentivized to invite, share, blog, embed, or otherwise distribute your content with the primary goal of acquiring other users. again, this can be done via emotional or financial influence (altho you may want to wait until you monetize and/or have funding to do the paid promotion). if you are now generating a large viewing audience, progress to the next phase.
Phase III: you should now focus on organic end-user acquisition, begin to dial down paid acquisition costs, start ramping up monetization, and hopefully begin to identify 1 or 2 high-volume channels that could become break even. if your monetization doesn't suck, now would be a good time to go raise capital & tell your potential investors you are getting close to profitability, and that they better give you a shitload of money & a high valuation before you don't need them anymore and can tell them to fuck off forever.
Phase IV: you are now running a break-even and/or profitable business. you have predictable & profitable customer acquisition in volume. borrow as much money as you can get, buy as much paid traffic as you can, and ramp the shit out of your organic channels. sit back while the benjamins roll in. wait for eric schmidt, steve ballmer, or warren buffet to give you a call.
rinse, repeat.
Thanks for this insightful article regarding how to gain traction for your specific site. When I first started reading it reminded me of the book Tipping Point.
That said, for every social network site you are currently trying to build, there are multiple ones that tailored toward the same audience. I would love to hear your opinion regarding how to how do you attract the first thousand or ten thousand participants.
Jesus Andrew, the genius never ends. Thank you for this.
What do you think about the potential of white-label social networks, like Ning, in this context?
Also, I hate it when I'm biking and my tire gets stuck in the tracks.
It would be interesting to model the critical mass issue as it relates to Craigslist. At first in a new city people try but traction is low - then a few months later they try again. The buzz is strong so communities grow over time.
I know for us - we have spent targeted Ad spend until we get our internal population/member ratio and then traction occurs. You have to spend to get there - but once you get there you can turn down the spend.
It is a fascinating business for sure - Thanks for the post Andrew.
Cheers - Eric
P.S. - Here is a post on our how we get critical mass - http://blog.pickuppal.com/2008/05/02/pups-per-click/
Andrew, another winner, your mind is truly a wonderland, Thanks!!
@dave mcclure - that was the sweetest summary I have read in a long time! The most succinct line:
"borrow as much money as you can get, buy as much paid traffic as you can, and ramp the shit out of your organic channels."
Nice comment - Cheers - Eric
Yes, getting critical mass is quite difficult.. thanks for the article.
Andrew, i really wonder when you'll introduce micropayments for this stuff - i'll give you a virtual gift on Facebook to start with!
With regards to your post, I think that's a pretty sweet summary - although I would add one parameter to the equation: in addition to figuring out what type of network you're targeting, you also need to figure out what "fuel" drives that particular social network. So if you're zwinky you know they're suckers for their little avatars, if you're dogster, you know they're crazy about cutie dogs. I think you could've done the pure "community building exercise" 3 years ago, but now that everyone has picked a primary social network - you really need to figure out what they're coming for!
Another way to think about it is that it's not the number of dots, but the number of lines on the social graph that measure critical mass. Now of course, some lines are useless, e.g. MySpace celebrities and Scoble/Calacanis's 5000 Facebook friends. For most communication/sharing social sites, you have to think about attracting "chunks" of pre-connected users at a time, and for local info, you're absolutely right: either entire neighborhoods come online at once or you don't get them at all.
Andrew,
Provacative stuff. I would add that one further consideration is the "density" of the starter population from which the network arises.
Social sites that are of the "organize my friends" variety -- Facebook, eg -- grow because they leverage existing online and offline social networks (ie, people invite their friends.)
These populations in effect have 99% density. That is, just about anyone that a user knows may be fair game to invite to the new network.
But in building social networks around shared interests -- golden retriever fanciers, ultramarathoners, rare coin collectors, or in the case of our sites at www.healthcentral.com, people with diabetes, breast cancer, or migraines -- the density of the target population is way, way low. It's highly unlikely that a person diagnosed with type II diabetes, for instance, knows anyone else in their existing social networks who suffers from that disease.
Thus a single individual can't be a huge viral catalyst for these kinds of social nets, for the simple reason that they can't just email all their friends with "hey, i found a great diabetes site!"...their friends won't care because very, very few of them have the disease.
Ironically, while the 1st type of social net is a "nice to have" application for people to organize their social lives, etc., the 2nd kind of net -- one of shared interests -- is critical: Whether it is trying to learn about stamp collecting or trying to cope with MS, connecting with a network of people who have the same goals and interests is huge -- there is so much shared information and support to be gained and given compared to one's own already-existing social nets.
Thus in the case of building these 2nd type of networks, the challenge isn't just to get a user excited about the benefits of the social net -- these are quite obvious and quite powerful. It is figuring out how to grow those populations to the level that they are valuable. One way is to leverage the already existing, smaller node points of existing communities that can help spread the word. Another is through transference: People come to the site via searching for basic information -- side effects of a drug, for instance -- and discover the social net that exists there. But the density factor means that these kinds of crucial nets grow far, far more slowly than the "organize my friends" type of net.
The good news is that, because they intrinsically are more valuable to each individual, these "shared interest" nets are likely to be more lasting once built.
Your article is very interesting. I haven't used the term critical mass myself, but I have been working towards that point where everything you have worked on comes together and all of a sudden you are ranked #1 in Google or a popular blog gets a hold of your content and your traffic and business takes off.
Thanks,
Dave
We recently launched a Tell-a-Friend widget (http://www.socialtwist.com) to help websites/blogs to get their content promoted by visitors. It is catching on well, but we have been thinking about this critical mass issue. Today, 80% of sites implementing our widgets are from only two countries US and India (both places, we are doing some marketing). For a product like this, should we just focus on select locations and not face fragmentation, as you suggest? Although we are getting several requests for multilingual support.Should we simply work on critical mass at few regions, before.
Does anybody have any special marketing tips for reaching a critical mass of CONCURRENT online users? for online games, online chats and such?
Thanks!
You said that Sites that are useful for "online friends" and don’t require too many people are the easiest to get off the ground (but have other issues, like they might be too niche) - I looked at the Skype example, requiring 2 minumum but the opposite of too niche, and am wondering what're the factors that decide whether a useful site that requires only a few people to "get off the ground" is niche or not...