Welcome to my World: entry

Let me start by saying that I don’t like social networks…let me change that. I don’t like social networks as they are right now. They are bloated, and full of advertisements, and almost as a rule, their design is horrible. and more recently, full of horrible third party applications. Super Wall, Super Ultra Wall, Super Ultra Mega Amazing Wall…

What can be done? What can be done to make social networks the kind of place that they were founded to be? Here’s my plan to make the perfect social network.

Allow customisation of profile pages, but limit it. Make sure that when users edit their profiles, that they don’t have too much control over the CSS, and HTML. Make sure that their pages fit with the general design of the site. You could also teach a HTML class on the site so people could learn how to make their profile pretty, and standards compliant.

Allow third party applications, but charge a fee for the SDK. This would annoy people in the beginning, but what it would do in the end is it would make sure that people’s pages aren’t cluttered with nonsense. It would make sure that only serious developers could make programs.

For gods sake, make the home page valid code. When tech-savy users check the site in the validator, they shouldn’t find 100 errors, they shouldn’t find 10, they shouldn’t even find one error in the code.

Make a reward system for users. Give them a reason to stay with your social network. Like if they win a contest, they get something they can redeem for virtual things on your site, like goods, or benefits. That way, they would still be happy that they recieved something, and it wouldn’t cost a cent.

Don’t sell out. When you start, and things are small, don’t freak, don’t go off and try to find as many users as you can. If the network rises slowly, instead of a meteoric rise like in the cases of MySpace and Facebook, then you have more of a chance of keeping it from becoming just an ad site.

Hire more workers when your site becomes more popular. When you can, hire more designers, customer service, content editors, etc. You need to keep up with the size of your social network, or else the users will know.

Any more ideas of how to avoid problems with a social network? Post them in the comments please.

Peace.

Keifer

(Anyone want to develop a social network with me? Email me, I’ve been thinking about it.)