I don't typically look at discrete social network applications from an end-user point of view, but after watching Joshua Porter's excellent presentation on social application design yesterday at the SNAP 2.0 Summit, I feel compelled to illustrate some best practices (and not so great ones too).
When I found out that AOL veteran Laurence Hooper was coming out with Loladex, I decided to check it out. (How many ex-AOLers are involved in some new type of vertical search?!) Loladex strives to one-up Yelp, within social network application platforms (e.g. Facebook), offering local search and socialized recommendations for restaurants, nightclubs, veterinarians and other consumer services.
So, here's what they're doing right (best practices):
- They're blogging from the get-go. And tweeting. That helps. As long as they keep it up.
- The application tells people where they rank within all Loladex raters; this sense of friendly competition encourages application use.
- Staying local; they're striving to achieve kick-ass competency in their local market (Washington D.C.) before trying to take over the rest of the nation. If other social network platform apps tried to geo-target their user base, they might have better luck achieving sustainable early membership.
- Variable trust feature: apps that leverage the social graph don't always account for varying levels of trust. Let's face it: you don't value all of your friends' opinions equally, right?
- Solid map mash-ups and Netflix-style solicitations (e.g. "Do you know a good storage company?") to encourage users to contribute content.
Here's what they need to work on:
- Blogging with a generic Wordpress template? C'mon, guys. Take an extra hour to customize a CSS stylesheet.
- Viral coefficient: How do they expect this application to become viral? Aside from asking people to invite their friends in order to improve results, they need to find another way to leverage the content to encourage sharing. If they're not accounting for attrition and there's no virality plan here, the app won't be sustainable.
- Opentable reviews: Why? No one goes to that property for reviews. I barely even go there for dinner reservations.
- Personal value does not yet precede network value: The current library of content will not draw users to the site for a few more weeks, unless they live in the D.C. area; possibly it would have been better to wait a few months before doing national outreach. Why not, instead brief every social media writer/blogger within 50 miles of Washington D.C.?
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Coming tomorrow: My wrap-up of actionable news from the SNAP 2.0 Summit and my colleague Tessa Greenwood's notes on the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs & Executives Social Networking conference.
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