Seven principles of a successful social product that you need to know
Social products are a very interesting bird. Even for the most experienced product manager, social products remain elusive. And although there are many obvious truths about them, there are plenty of ways to think them wrong. Especially if you are deep in the current moment, make decisions at the pixel level, try to remember what exactly is important - and the overall picture is blurred.
There is only one magic that I discovered in the design of attractive social products that break through the noise perfectly and seize the time and money of people. This is a total adherence to the following key principles of design, product architecture.
1. Develop a product so that it makes sense in the world of infinite supply. In 2010, users are simply overwhelmed with the number of people, applications, requests, reminders, relationships, and time requirements. You love your product. Its benefits are completely obvious to you. However, if you and each member of your team cannot clearly convey what emotional benefit someone will get from 15 minutes using your service - you should still work. Because this is the time people can spend on Facebook, LinkedIN, or Twitter.
These are not the pink thingies on the site. Neither I, nor potential customers of your service are interested in your functions, game mechanics, or how cool it will be when millions of people are on your service. I am very selfish about my own time, and you have only a few seconds to hook me with something new. And I'm not alone in this.
')
To successfully take advantage of fleeting attention, you need to build everything so that the whole product screams about its only goal of existence. Make it emotional. If your team cannot connect every decision you make with the emotion you want people to make, the justification for your existence is not so obvious. Not so obviously serving your task, the task of guiding your team and all decisions on the product you make.
2. Be the best in the world in something. To emphasize the uniqueness of your social undertaking, you need in one thing to be the best in the world. Lululemon has built a business with an annual turnover of $ 450 million, focusing on black yoga pants. Twitter is 140 character messages. Facebook is a connection to people you already know. Everything that these companies do is connected with the peculiarity in which they want to be the best in the world.
It is not always obvious what you are best at. Culturing the wrong thing can be a problem. But it is even worse to build a social product without fundamental principles. When you are focused on one thing that will be the coolest thing in your product - all you need is to run this one thing.
Ask yourself and every member of your team every week. What are you the best. Or even better if you define it, agree with it, type it in, and hang it on the wall. This should be a filter for making all decisions on the product.
3. Look for uniqueness. Today's social platforms and applications are absolutely fantastic work, satisfying the human need to belong to something more. But equally important - in the world of infinite sentence - that which makes us different, special. People want a shortage. People want exclusivity. This does not mean that your product should be niche. Frontierville (game for Facebook) was built for mass use, so that I can play with ALL my friends. But he still finds ways to bring uniqueness to social experience, working with tools such as neighbors, storyline modifications and collections.
When people talk about exclusivity and scarcity, the theme of “game mechanics” is not so far away. I love game mechanics just like you. But if you implement the same mechanism as everyone else, you have a problem. We return to the point about the endless sentence. If the market has an endless supply of points, medals, levels, rewards (and they are in every social product), introducing them into your system without careful deliberation will only cause a loss of concentration on uniqueness. A better approach is to find out what makes your users feel unique in your service, and not use special gaming approaches. Then you can pick up functions, like cherries, that will strengthen the emotional sense of the meaning of the existence of your product. For uniqueness to work, you need to lead, not follow.
4. Focus on the most important interaction, until it works with a bang. At the moment when critical functions are defined, usually one interaction option is clearly more important and often used. And if you did it perfectly, the user will return. And if not, you have not yet realized your potential. Take this option and manically improve it. For Twitter, this is a message flow. For Polyvore, this is the clothing selection page. For Facebook, this is a news feed. For Youtube, this is the video page itself. Magic happens precisely in the interaction, so carefully groom and nurture the main process of interaction so that it becomes a star.
5. Carefully choose the words. The more you consider your product social, the more your choice of words should be different and distinctive from everything else. The earlier the better. In fact, all the major brands of the last 30 years have begun passionately and defiantly. Virgin? Sex, dragz and rock'n'roll. Apple? Advertising 1984 year. Nike? Subculture of baleen runners. Facebook? Only a few remember the original Scarface logo.
There are things that are worth copying from other services, and there are those that will be unique in your product. Page layouts? Do your best, but pay attention to what is already working. Colors? It is difficult to be original in this, although it seems blue worn out. Icons? How the card will fall. Terminology? This - own it. Your own choice of words is the main place to express your point of view. It shows not only what emotional impact the brand should have on users, but also what kind of relationships people should have after using your service.
6. Make a party, not a museum. Excellent social products are clean, simple and fast. Successful products have a not so cool design, so people, photos, videos, texts and comments attract all the attention. The more you add design, from colors to non-standard controls, non-web fonts and graphics, the less your product resembles a party and more - a museum. Or a magazine. Neither serves the purpose. You want your product to feel like a living, breathing party, and not expensive furniture that does not assume that you are sitting on it.
7. Develop relationships between people, not functions. Today, each of us has many social roles and types of relationships in the real and virtual worlds. If you want to create a new social product, it’s not enough to offer features like photos, videos or events. You should pay attention to how the interaction of people within your product will be important to users, and how they will differ from the types of interactions that already exist on Facebook, LinkedIN or Twitter.
Most people will say that Facebook Connect will provide a “social” connection between people in any project. I would argue with that. If you provide a unique kind of relationship, then people will come to you, not Facebook.
For example. I found that in most social apps where I join, there are the same 10 of my friends from Facebook. Usually these are my most prolific friends. In most cases, these services simply expand those channels of communication that I already follow on Facebook, such as photos, events, groups, videos. And I have no special reason to return to these new separate applications again.
To create a new social product, you need to think about how this product will expand, deepen and change the relationships that now exist between people. It is not so easy. The best example of a service that does this is Quora. First, the service was launched as one of the implementations of Facebook Social Graph, but quickly separated. Since I could acquaint you with people that you may be interested in as a result of meaningful comments, experience and expertise in topics that are important to you.
It takes a lot of effort to ensure that people support newcomers to social services. And it is even worth spending time and energy on what constitutes a community of service users, or on building the type of interaction that you want to offer people.
When I think about what will be created, opened, invented and re-invented in the world of social services - I am extremely inspired. Even about the next six months, and even more so when I imagine five years. These principles shed light on the next steps ahead, but, with each new success of new products, more and more interesting and unexpected will appear. As Alan Kay said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” I can't wait to see what happens next.
Gina Bianchini (Gina Bianchini) is the creator of the Ning social network, a leading platform for organizers, activists and reputable people who create their social experience with 80 million users every month.
There is only one magic that I discovered in the design of attractive social products that break through the noise perfectly and seize the time and money of people. This is a total adherence to the following key principles of design, product architecture.
1. Develop a product so that it makes sense in the world of infinite supply. In 2010, users are simply overwhelmed with the number of people, applications, requests, reminders, relationships, and time requirements. You love your product. Its benefits are completely obvious to you. However, if you and each member of your team cannot clearly convey what emotional benefit someone will get from 15 minutes using your service - you should still work. Because this is the time people can spend on Facebook, LinkedIN, or Twitter.
These are not the pink thingies on the site. Neither I, nor potential customers of your service are interested in your functions, game mechanics, or how cool it will be when millions of people are on your service. I am very selfish about my own time, and you have only a few seconds to hook me with something new. And I'm not alone in this.
')
To successfully take advantage of fleeting attention, you need to build everything so that the whole product screams about its only goal of existence. Make it emotional. If your team cannot connect every decision you make with the emotion you want people to make, the justification for your existence is not so obvious. Not so obviously serving your task, the task of guiding your team and all decisions on the product you make.
2. Be the best in the world in something. To emphasize the uniqueness of your social undertaking, you need in one thing to be the best in the world. Lululemon has built a business with an annual turnover of $ 450 million, focusing on black yoga pants. Twitter is 140 character messages. Facebook is a connection to people you already know. Everything that these companies do is connected with the peculiarity in which they want to be the best in the world.
It is not always obvious what you are best at. Culturing the wrong thing can be a problem. But it is even worse to build a social product without fundamental principles. When you are focused on one thing that will be the coolest thing in your product - all you need is to run this one thing.
Ask yourself and every member of your team every week. What are you the best. Or even better if you define it, agree with it, type it in, and hang it on the wall. This should be a filter for making all decisions on the product.
3. Look for uniqueness. Today's social platforms and applications are absolutely fantastic work, satisfying the human need to belong to something more. But equally important - in the world of infinite sentence - that which makes us different, special. People want a shortage. People want exclusivity. This does not mean that your product should be niche. Frontierville (game for Facebook) was built for mass use, so that I can play with ALL my friends. But he still finds ways to bring uniqueness to social experience, working with tools such as neighbors, storyline modifications and collections.
When people talk about exclusivity and scarcity, the theme of “game mechanics” is not so far away. I love game mechanics just like you. But if you implement the same mechanism as everyone else, you have a problem. We return to the point about the endless sentence. If the market has an endless supply of points, medals, levels, rewards (and they are in every social product), introducing them into your system without careful deliberation will only cause a loss of concentration on uniqueness. A better approach is to find out what makes your users feel unique in your service, and not use special gaming approaches. Then you can pick up functions, like cherries, that will strengthen the emotional sense of the meaning of the existence of your product. For uniqueness to work, you need to lead, not follow.
4. Focus on the most important interaction, until it works with a bang. At the moment when critical functions are defined, usually one interaction option is clearly more important and often used. And if you did it perfectly, the user will return. And if not, you have not yet realized your potential. Take this option and manically improve it. For Twitter, this is a message flow. For Polyvore, this is the clothing selection page. For Facebook, this is a news feed. For Youtube, this is the video page itself. Magic happens precisely in the interaction, so carefully groom and nurture the main process of interaction so that it becomes a star.
5. Carefully choose the words. The more you consider your product social, the more your choice of words should be different and distinctive from everything else. The earlier the better. In fact, all the major brands of the last 30 years have begun passionately and defiantly. Virgin? Sex, dragz and rock'n'roll. Apple? Advertising 1984 year. Nike? Subculture of baleen runners. Facebook? Only a few remember the original Scarface logo.
There are things that are worth copying from other services, and there are those that will be unique in your product. Page layouts? Do your best, but pay attention to what is already working. Colors? It is difficult to be original in this, although it seems blue worn out. Icons? How the card will fall. Terminology? This - own it. Your own choice of words is the main place to express your point of view. It shows not only what emotional impact the brand should have on users, but also what kind of relationships people should have after using your service.
6. Make a party, not a museum. Excellent social products are clean, simple and fast. Successful products have a not so cool design, so people, photos, videos, texts and comments attract all the attention. The more you add design, from colors to non-standard controls, non-web fonts and graphics, the less your product resembles a party and more - a museum. Or a magazine. Neither serves the purpose. You want your product to feel like a living, breathing party, and not expensive furniture that does not assume that you are sitting on it.
7. Develop relationships between people, not functions. Today, each of us has many social roles and types of relationships in the real and virtual worlds. If you want to create a new social product, it’s not enough to offer features like photos, videos or events. You should pay attention to how the interaction of people within your product will be important to users, and how they will differ from the types of interactions that already exist on Facebook, LinkedIN or Twitter.
Most people will say that Facebook Connect will provide a “social” connection between people in any project. I would argue with that. If you provide a unique kind of relationship, then people will come to you, not Facebook.
For example. I found that in most social apps where I join, there are the same 10 of my friends from Facebook. Usually these are my most prolific friends. In most cases, these services simply expand those channels of communication that I already follow on Facebook, such as photos, events, groups, videos. And I have no special reason to return to these new separate applications again.
To create a new social product, you need to think about how this product will expand, deepen and change the relationships that now exist between people. It is not so easy. The best example of a service that does this is Quora. First, the service was launched as one of the implementations of Facebook Social Graph, but quickly separated. Since I could acquaint you with people that you may be interested in as a result of meaningful comments, experience and expertise in topics that are important to you.
It takes a lot of effort to ensure that people support newcomers to social services. And it is even worth spending time and energy on what constitutes a community of service users, or on building the type of interaction that you want to offer people.
When I think about what will be created, opened, invented and re-invented in the world of social services - I am extremely inspired. Even about the next six months, and even more so when I imagine five years. These principles shed light on the next steps ahead, but, with each new success of new products, more and more interesting and unexpected will appear. As Alan Kay said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” I can't wait to see what happens next.
Gina Bianchini (Gina Bianchini) is the creator of the Ning social network, a leading platform for organizers, activists and reputable people who create their social experience with 80 million users every month.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/109195/
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