Creating Social Products
The article I chose to write about talks about the shift in the approach social products take to become popular. In other words, they are talking about how to create a network that is popular and unique for the user so they continue to use their product. One example of the traditional way to build a network would be Facebook. The way they approach building a network is get users and then have them connect with each other to create content. Products like this seek to have users create a network of a certain size in order to have the product be useful enough to the user that they continue to use it. Using tools like contact-list integration they try to make it as easy as possible for users to build a network. However, now products like WhatsApp and Instagram are becoming popular using a different way of building a network. For example, Instagram began as just a photo-taking tool and then extended itself to include a social network. This approach would be considered creating content and then extending it to a network, which is the opposite of what Facebook does. To build a social product this way requires two main aspects. The first is having a product that users can use on their own and don’t necessarily need another person for. This is like how Instagram is mainly based on taking pictures. It also needs to improve in value when this content is shared with friends. This allows for more links to the content and builds bigger networks and gets more people to use the product.
This relates to what we have discussed in class about pagerank and making a website more popular. This is because social products have to think of the best way to build their product so that it is linked to, or people within the product link to other stuff and create a strong network. This also relates to getting a product to reach a certain threshold for it to become valuable, or the Network Effect. This is because these products want to get a certain number of people on board with their product and to make it useful before they choose to extend it and add networking to it. If they were to try to start too early they could potentially not have enough content to begin building a network that’s big enough for the product to last. They have to be careful about choosing and aiming for a good threshold so that their product succeeds.
http://www.wired.com/2014/03/building-next-whatsapp-instagram-network-effect-playbook/