Procrastinatr

My half-assed take on what it takes to be a good social network

Suze Orman ends her show every week with these words of wisdom: “People first, then money, then things.” The idea is to focus your priorities in life, so that you don’t put financial and material matters over your personal well being.

Let’s use this philosophy with social networking and the Web 2.0 phenomenon in general: People first, then design/code, then money (There’s probably better phrasing, but this is what I could come up with at 2 a.m.). The focus should always be on the customer/consumer first and foremost, to treat them like human beings instead of numbers on a spreadsheet. The purpose for social networks is to bring people together, not to force on them some kind of popularity contest. As long as the product has this one singular goal in mind, it’s off to a decent start.

Next, is to make the service usable. This involves an elegant orchestra of both design and code, to make the site user-friendly, presentable, as well as stable. This is a huge priority of course, as it is the core of the product itself. But it should never be more important than putting the people first.

Last but not least is when you start worrying about how the hell you’re going to make money. Advertising, marketing, PR, etc. Pull out all the stops if you will. But it should never interfere with a good user experience, and it should never interfere with your goal of helping people come together.

Of course I’m not saying these steps exist in isolation. Oftentimes it all comes together in one big chunk. But thinking of the recent Loopt incident as well as the myriad of social network failures have made me wonder if this formula (or something very similar) wouldn’t be a helpful thing to keep in mind.