So what do you think the goal of these websites are: Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, Pownce, YouTube, etc? Wouldn’t you love to read the original business plan vision, mission and strategy statments? I bet it is full of B.S. and what they stated in there business plans was very specific and they became something else. Facebook prolly had something like, “To recreate the high school/college yearbook online”. Total crap, they became a lot more then that.
Why are some of these sites so successful and others not so successful? Look at Twitter ridiculous growth curve. Do you think they had some vision of becoming a tool for other companies/applications backbone?
I have been reading one my favorite authors, Seth Godin’s latest book. And it hit me that all these websites basically should have the same vision and mission statement. Why some are successfull and others are not is really a case of how close their statements are to the following or just dumb luck.
Vision – Create online community
Mission – To enable users to tell there story, connect with others, and promote discussion
Now you look at that and say, how do you get from that to Facebook? Well, that is a long story but you can look at your Facebook account and the applications you use and look at the ones you passed on. My bet is the ones you passed on add no value to your interaction with others or are just stupid marketing applications.
Speaking of marketing, look how bad companies are implementing it on social networks. I get at least an invite a day to some twitter user that is following 55,000 users. Like anyone is going to follow them and listen to their marketing BS. Definately old school and pretty much completely worthless today. I’m afaid Seth Godin is correct, old school marketing is dead. Move on and use the social web as it is intended. To tell a story, interact with others and garner discussion.
