Is it too late to get into that field? I know myspace pretty much owns the market but is there a chance that a new social networking site might be a huge hit.
If you have a million dollars for advertising and a good unique idea, I dont see why not. Although Myspace pretty much rules it and I just dont see people migrating anywhere else to quick.
As long as you can zero in on a niche population, it's never too late. As for requiring a lot of capital..... it depends. If you are looking to recruit people and have them migrate their social relationships online, it will take cash. However, if you plan to piggyback on existing inefficient online networks (ie., network site for lawyers or accountants or actuaries), then it's going to be cheaper. Also, ad rates for such highly selective niches MIGHT make it worth the effort. If you need to reduce your costs by outsourcing much of the tactical and maintenance work for this, hit me up
it depends, if you want now do great social networking site then it very hard work and it takes you much money to start that. Becouse you must to better than other sites are at the moment. sry bad english.
right now, myspace is no 1 for social networking site, but there're also other site that still compete with myspace and until now they can't match with myspace. it will take times to develop credibility in social networking site, you also need more money to develop it.
Myspace is also increasingly filled with spam.... the next challenge... a (relatively) spam free social network.
You do not have to match with myspace. Don't worry about over-running them, just do your own thing. There is more than enough room in the market for another site to be quite profitable. Isn't that enough? Do you really have to replace myspace to be successful? As for migrating, I don't know about that being so difficult. I routinely hear people complain about how "ugly" my space is, or how there are "too many ads" there, or how they are "sick of the bots". Tackle these issues and you could very well create a core audience of people who migrate over from MS.
Just as webmasterlabor.com says, target a specific niche and will never be too late. It will be much easier to grow and monetize than trying to compete with the larger sites in the general market.
I just launched a "myspace" for pets and their owners. Gonna see how this goes... didnt take too much capital to start... If you have a good product and good word of mouth you shouldnt need to invest too much money on advertisement. I saw a myspace like site for tattoo lovers with over 1000 members. just go with what interests you and you will have people looking for the same...remember its world wide web theres always people that have the same interest/s as you.
Its never too late. My friend just started a social networking site and he spent about 1k on advertising and he already has 2 million useres registered. - Prilep
Yeah for some reason an idiot gave me red rep because he didnt belive me. PM me if you actually want to see the site. And dont give red rep if you dont know. - Prilep
It depends on the niche of people. I used to work for a Venture capital fund and one of the companies we funded was an ethnic professional version of CollegeClub. It was extremely costly having people migrate their offline associations to an online tool. The project eventually failed. It would have been an EXTREMELY lucrative niche if it worked.
If you have a good product and a good initial userbase then i'm sure you should be able to go somewhere with your site. It's just that you will never really be able to compete at the level of the big guys.
I got an idea from jeremy860's post, if you target the unsatisfied users of myspace and similar sites looking through what actually they are missing, you can get good number of users, for example a member of digg has started digg like site recently ( plugim.com) and I find most of their members are from digg!
just make one catering to a specific niche and you're good to go. social networking sites have not yet seen the end of their time.
I also don't think that end of social networking is directly around the corner, but we will begin to see that they cannot survive off pictures of pretty girls alone. Overtime, people are going to look for more substance with their social networking websites they join. I always like to look at the real world and apply it to internet business because successful internet businesses follow the same guidelines as brick and mortar businesses. What is interesting to me is when someone says, "I had 1 million people come to my website the first week." Yes, by all accounts that is great. However, how will this work in the long run. Will you continue to see that same growth? Here is a real world example. Wal-Mart is the monster of the retail world. Many people think that Wal-Mart is the greatest business on earth. By all accounts, it is. But there is an important fact about most Wal-Mart stores, sales growth per store is falling. Therefore, the only way that Wal-Mart can sustain its growth is by adding stores, which is an expensive proposition. Instead, Target Corp focuses on increasing sales growth within its stores. It has a progressive advertising campaign that alludes to it's new products and new product lines. Now, apply this is social networking. You have a giant out there, myspace. Myspace is continually adding things to it's crappy infrastructure. However, I truly believe that there are more and more people are dropping off on myspace because there is truly nothing new to them. You get bored after a while. Posting comments like, "Babe you ballennnnnnnnnn" get real old after a while. Instead smaller niche websites should focus on adding new content to website to keep them coming back. The key is a successful social networking website….KEEP THEM COMING BACK! Sustained growth through relevant content is what all social networking websites need. I firmly believe that you need content first and social networking second. When you take into account that this is the basic premise of all strong relationships in the world, it because painfully clear that most social networking websites will have to go through a massive set of changes otherwise their members are going to be bored. Let's examine... YouTube is a CONTENT FIRST, social networking second. YouTube will succeed. VOX. Vox is awesome. Content first, social networking second. Blogger. Again, content first, social networking a far second. Simply put, myspace, facebook, friendster are boring websites. I don't want to read about your teen angst nor do I want to read your blog which is clearly addressed to your boyfriend although you use to term "you" to disguise it. It just doesn't keep me coming back, unlike this flippin' forum. Cheers, Brian
How would you promote a social networking site? and do you start out with fake profiles? I mean who is going to sign up when there are 100 users on the whole website.