Social Design - What I've Learned So Far (Part 1)

In the move to the "Internet space" at LiveMocha, it became clear, almost immediately, that many of the rules of Product Management at RIM don't apply. The most notable differences: we have no customers, we're building a product from scratch, and we have little budget for promotion. The core product, though not solely a social network, will be successful only if the social networking feature (yes, I consider it a feature) is successful; we're up against strong incumbents in the industry who have brand strength, are dominant in traditional channels, and are delivering products that mesh well with customer expectations. If we're going to be disruptive, our implementation of the idea of web 2.0 has to be rock-solid: an engaged and passionate community participating only because of their free-will interest in the subject matter.

Coming from mobile, especially coming from a service provider that's intermediated by the carrier, you often lose site of your end user. You prioritize bugs and build features based on the squeakiest of wheels and forget that, at the end of the day, there's a real user eventually putting down $300 and $30/ mo for your product. So, I had to invest quite a bit of time researching community and relearn how to build products for users, not channels.

There are 4 stand-out thought-leaders that have really shaped my perspective on social design:

Josh Porter @ bokardo.com. His series of blog-posts, Common Pitfalls of Building Social Web Applications and How to Avoid Them, is incredible - I won't rehash it all here - you need to read it. Here are the key "common pitfalls (he had 11, these are the 5 I've focused on):

1. Underestimating the "cold start problem" - A site that derives value from the community, needs a community to have any value - obvious, yes. The question from the beginning for LiveMocha is: how will we initially seed the site so new members find LiveMocha.com valuable? We have several strategies - I'll discuss this in future posts - but suffice it to say, there's irony in going from Anti-SPAM Product Manager at RIM to SPAM Product Manager at LiveMocha. I'm being somewhat spurious, but one technique we're employing is targeting "mavens" on similar social sites ("mavens" is a term from "The Tipping Point" and was a tactic used, unsuccessfully, by AOL/Netscape to compete with Digg).
   
2. Focusing on too many things. This is really just Product Management 101, but it's important to note (1) As Product Managers we have a "vision", but often it may be too complex to clearly articulate to users all at once. (2) That many social sites are being built at the direction of the developers themselves so, when left to their own devices, the UI, particularly the navigation, ends up looking like an airplane cockpit rather than something simple like Apple's FrontRow
   
3. An over-focus on social value. Social networking is a "feature", not a product. If you're only building a social network, then you're competing with MySpace (bought for $770M) or Facebook (being self-valued at $10B). Good luck to you. You better have a really passionate niche.
   
4. No business plan other than to grow. Fortunately, very early on, we know the path we want go down. The reason LiveMocha is a such a great business, is because we have a plan for monetization. Of course, we may find it's more difficult than we think, but at least we have a plan.
   
5. Not appointing a full time community manager. What's a Community Manager? That was my question, so I spent a bit more time researching "Community Management". Anyone who has done Product Management knows that Product Managers have historically had difficulty articulating their value; especially in large, non-technical, companies. I think for the most part, Product Management is now a well understood practice. Community Managers are the new Product Managers insofar as the discipline is new and the value is often misunderstood.
   

I'll discuss Community Management in my next post - stay tuned!