Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Seattle 2.0, and imported to GeekWire as part of our acquisition of Seattle 2.0 and its archival content. For more background, see this post.
By David Aronchick
The answer may not be as obvious as you would first think. Entrepreneurs often think about building sites that not only bring users joy, but also where the users create the site in their own image, through comments, posting images and creating new content. But only a subset of sites truly require this sort of interactivity. The rest of the world wastes enormous amounts of time and energy building yet another silo that no one really uses. I see the universe of community sites breaking down into four categories:
- There is no site without user networking: These sites are merely skeletons without users, and adding one user does not even matter. It does not become valuable without multiple users and the connections between them. Examples for these types of sites include Facebook and Twitter. If you fit into this category, it’s not only not worth launching without the social features, but you need to figure out a way to get large bodies of users to come at once, even when you have nothing to offer. Until you cross the critical mass threshold, your site will never go anywhere.
- There is no site without user content: Users can come and contribute content, but network effects are not relevant. Examples of these include Stackoverflow, Quora, Entertonement or Flickr. The key identifier here is if the user never came back, would the site and their contribution still have value? If you find yourself in this category, your goal is to beg, borrow or steal to get the critical mass of content, and use that to start the virtuous circle.
- The site would do fine, but is just that much better because of the community: The core identifier for these sites are that the owners create or manage the content, and then the users can comment or not. Some example sites are Cheezburger networks or Television Without Pity. If you are developing one of these sites, you should be finding the best editors and creatives in the world, as nothing attracts more users than unique, high quality content.
- Community is an after thought: The vast majority of sites fit into this category, where community features may be useful but are unlikely to move the needle one way or the other. Some very successful examples include Mint, Zillow, Redfin or SmugMug. Here, the tools are all that matters and spending any significant amount of engineering time on anything but a better user experience for those tools is probably a waste of time.
- As a special bonus, I’ll toss in one more site – The Anomaly: There’s only one site out there that fits this category, where the users sort of matter and sort of don’t – it’s Youtube. At one point, community mattered, and the interconnection between users built the site into the third largest site in the world. Now, however, Youtube has become a platform through and through. People use the site to host video, but the community is largely drive by; you come in, get your videos, and leave. Be wary if you try and model your site after them; it’s really not the kind of thing you can replicate.
We all dream of the time when users come to our site to engage in rich conversations, where our site becomes the cool place to hang out. But there’s only enough room to be “the in-spot”, and you need to be realistic about who you are, and where you want to spend your precious time. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is building features for the users you want, instead of the users you have. There is no shame in actively saying “this is not a place for communities, we’re not going to build features to support them”. In fact, that is the kind of focus that I would bet on for long term success.
