The whole chicken-and-egg thing

by | Apr 27, 2007 | Being a startup, Loladex, Social search

It’s easy enough to get a “local social” site up and running. (Or let’s say it is, anyway.) The challenge is getting people to use it.

Because obviously, if a site is supposed to be animated by the contributions of its users, people won’t find it compelling until those contributions exist in sufficient numbers.

And if people don’t find a site compelling, why would they bother contributing in the first place?

It’s Catch-22 for social media — call it Catch-22.0.

Here are some elements I believe must come together for any socially driven site — not just local — to take off quickly:

  1. The site must offer some value that isn’t dependent on the network effect. In the case of a Web 2.0 site this won’t be the primary value, pretty much by definition. Still, a site better have something good to offer its very first user.
  2. The site must make it easy, from Day One, for users to share and distribute the experience. Tactics range from “e-mail to a friend” to embeddable widgets. This is received wisdom by now, so I won’t dwell on it.
  3. The site must make users feel valued for their contributions. Photos, profiles, message walls, kudos, “favoriting” — all the usual social-networking stuff. Flickr is a model in this regard. Yelp does a pretty good job in the local space.
  4. The site must quickly demonstrate its value to one or more existing communities, real or virtual. Social effects work best along established pathways, and user contributions have most meaning when they’re seen by other users who are “related” by interest, friendship or geography. Sites such as del.icio.us have thrived because they speak mostly to a community of geeks, for instance. Craigslist got its start in a subculture of San Francisco. Kudzu is focusing on Atlanta.
  5. The site must target, and then leverage, the users whose contributions will add most value. Which is more valuable to the average moviegoer: A thumbs-up from me, or a thumbs-up from Roger Ebert*? In a related vein, which is more valuable to you: A thumbs-up from me, or a thumbs-up from your best friend? Which is most valuable to the site as a whole: A contribution from someone who contributes daily, or another person’s first and last contribution? All information is not created equal.
  6. The site must be seeded, prior to its unveiling, with enough contributions that it doesn’t look entirely empty to its targeted community, and to the targeted users within that community.
  7. The site must make effective use of SEO, so that it quickly attracts the highly directed users who are most likely to add value.
  8. The site’s users — especially the key contributors — should have a way to share in the value they create. This incentive would go beyond the psychic rewards mentioned above. Some video-sharing sites, such as Revver, have made it a straight financial deal. I see the logic, but in the local space, at least, this makes me nervous. Squidoo is doing interesting stuff with charitable donations, which I find more palatable.
  9. Extra points if the site provides a platform for (a) creating businesses; (b) increasing the efficiency of existing businesses.

Each of these tactics is on the Loladex checklist. I believe our success will depend on hitting every single one of them. And the checklist is probably missing a bunch of stuff …

*You may argue that Roger Ebert’s opinion is “editorial” rather than “community,” but I believe that Web 2.0 is all about blurring that difference — and, importantly, that the blurring works both ways.

Why the name “Loladex”?

by | Apr 17, 2007 | Loladex

Actually, I haven’t decided for sure whether the site itself will be called Loladex. But the company name has a few origins:

  1. It evokes “rolodex,” which has been an important metaphor for me.
  2. It continues a tradition. My wife’s bakery is Lola Cookies & Treats.
  3. It evokes “local.” (Well, not really. But kind of.)

Not everyone likes the name, but I’m getting very attached to it.

What is Loladex?

by | Apr 12, 2007 | Local search, Loladex

I’ll get into more detail as the weeks progress, but basically Loladex is a new site that will help users find businesses and people in the real world. It’s based on the premise that today’s so-called “local search” products — products like Google Maps, for instance — don’t work very well, particularly when it comes to finding local businesses:

  1. They have little in common with the way I look for local businesses “in real life”
  2. And they’re not truly helpful in finding local businesses, unless I already have a specific one in mind

The first point wouldn’t be much of a sin, except that (IMO) it causes the second.

So how do I find, say, a plumber in real life? Well, if I want to find a good plumber, I ask someone. That’s where I figure we’ll start.

An aside:

After working on local Web sites for many years, I find myself using the industry’s stock examples. For whatever reason, plumbers come up a lot. I think it’s from the old days of print Yellow Pages.

And yet … I’m always surprised by how bad the Web is at finding a good plumber.  (Any old plumber? Sure, the Web can handle that.)

So many industry experts use “plumber” as an example that you’d imagine this problem would have been licked — or even just addressed — ages ago. If I have my way, Loladex will be the first local search product that actually does well on this poster-boy of search terms.