Building a Social Network Site Compared to a Forum

[Dravis]

I love this "building a community" section of the forum because it's exactly what I'm trying to do but most of the posts are talking about building a user base on a forum. I was wondering if anyone had any experience building a social network/news "Web 2.0" type site as compared to a forum. Do the same strategies apply? Or is it different than building a forum?

I'm finding a lot of people in my target audience (people with an interest in making money online or internet marketing) don't even know what social networking is yet. Everyone knows what a forum is, but I think some people come to my site for the first time and don't get it.

I'd love to hear some experiences and advice. I know this is all pretty new so I don't expect a ton of replies, but any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[michaeb]

What is the URL to your site?

As far as forums vs. web 2.0, I kind of always thought forums were web 2.0, being user generated content and all, maybe I am missing something. Maybe people see social networking as less of a resource to their business than an informational forum?

I'd love to see your site, maybe I can offer more then.

Thanks,

Brian M.

[Dravis]

That's a good point Brian, forums are all user generated content. In a way, my site is a forum because you create a user, and then post a story with a link or your own informative article on a certain subject, then others can reply to those posts with comments. They can also vote for your post if they like it which gives it more visibility.

Have a look and let me know your thoughts. I have a feeling getting people to sign up and post on my site won't be a whole lot different than doing so on a forum. Just that some people aren't used to this type of layout yet.

http://www.PlugIM.com

[DaStuff]

Go to the marketing forums and have a contest going in your signature...

Something along the lines of "Sign up and join the fastest growing Internet Marketing Community and enter for the chance to win 'insert product here'"...

It doesn't have to be a car or anything but something that all internet marketers druel over (like the new book by so and so or this fancy piece of software)...

That should get people coming and as your community slowly grows so will your plugs... and then more and more ppl will come through word of mouth and other ways...

Just one game plan you could follow... Try a couple different and see what works for you. Or maybe give away a monthly book, or something..

[Clenard]

Hey Dravis,

Coming from someone who now owns approximately 10 forums and 4 Social Networking sites - I can assure you that Social Networking Communities are much easier to promote and generate a membership base than forums are. I believe the fact that everyone knows what MySpace is - they see that a SNS "looks familiar" and has everything they feel they might need to have fun...

...for instance: I have an old Hip Hop forum that took nearly 2 years to get 2,500 members and we promoted it hard. Sure, there was lots of competition but once I started a Hip Hop SNS - we got that many in one month...

Same site, different Script. (PHPFox with a VB rather than just a VB)

I have another site that went from 800 in a year on a VB to 3,800 in 2 months... of course that's an Adult Community but same name, etc.

Use other Social Networking Communities to your advantage but don't spam!

Hope this helps!

[Codeman1234]

so in your opinion is the only good social script??? phpfox??? isnt there anything better??? than that?? anybody know any other scripts??

thanks a lot for your help

[Dravis]

Great idea DaStuff. Forgive my sitepoint-newbieness but which section of the forum (specifically) do you mean when you say "marketing forums"? I didn't see a section specifically geared towards marketing per say.

Clint, I'm glad to hear that. Do you have any tips you'd care to share to help me get started? I've been getting a few new signup here and there but not a whole lot of activity. I'm constantly adding new content myself of course to keep it fresh.

[synergetic]

Hi Dravis. I have discovered social networks for myself two months ago, have been greatly surprised and now have similar questions.
Is there a big difference between SNs and forums with feature-rich membership system? May be, the way is just an evolution of forums to social networking by adding SN features to vB/phpbb etc.?
I feel that in promoting SNs there should be more world-of-mouth and other memeber-to-member activities than with ordinary (web 1.0 ) forum. IMHO, SNs are less anonymous and have more personal touch. Accounts that you create whem joining SN are like projections of your personality to the specific community.

[Clenard]

Great idea DaStuff. Forgive my sitepoint-newbieness but which section of the forum (specifically) do you mean when you say "marketing forums"? I didn't see a section specifically geared towards marketing per say.

Clint, I'm glad to hear that. Do you have any tips you'd care to share to help me get started? I've been getting a few new signup here and there but not a whole lot of activity. I'm constantly adding new content myself of course to keep it fresh.

Hey Ryan,

Yeah, I'd definately use MySpace to get started. This doesn't mean spamming... this means simply create an account, edit your profile with Banners, Links, Info, etc. and add as many people as possible with one account - then try another account (make it the same thing just a different email when registering) and try A/B split testing with it.

Once you start adding all of those people - you'll definately notice a big increase in membership but you also have an almost "opt-in" type list you can "contact" by "stopping by and saying hi"

Don't spam anybody - keep it clean and keep it friendly... people will see your site eventually.

Other than that - software like PHPFox has the "Invite friends" feature as well as the Email Plugin feature that allows you to login to GMail, Yahoo and Hotmail from the software and export your Emails to PHPFox to send a message to your friends (invite). Also the fact that you can send a link to your own Profile (ie, www.yoursite.com/YourName) never fails either. It's the perfect way to promote a site. Everyone is given those links in their User CP too so they know their personal link.

There's a ton of ways to promote these sites - but other Social Networks are the easiest as the people who frequent those sites will know how to use your site and they appreciate the functionality.

I checked out your site - PLUGIM.com , nice site! I like the design alot... are you using Wordpress or is that a custom script? Nice site!

[Clenard]

so in your opinion is the only good social script??? phpfox??? isnt there anything better??? than that?? anybody know any other scripts??

thanks a lot for your help

Good luck finding a better script for less than $10,000 - if that cheap. The rest don't compare... you can see for yourself.

[fullphaser]

I think the thing with a social networking site is you have to target a much more broader group than with a forum, With a forum you have a niche, with a Social networking site, you are talking a much more massive scale of users so you have to target much broader than you normally would

[Clenard]

I think the thing with a social networking site is you have to target a much more broader group than with a forum, With a forum you have a niche, with a Social networking site, you are talking a much more massive scale of users so you have to target much broader than you normally would

While I agree - I think it's better to say "you get to" rather than "have to"

[jungerpants]

Social networking sites can exist within a niche. In fact, if they want to compete, they probably should.

Facebook had it great when it was restricted to college students, but now that they are opening to everyone, they're in MySpace land.

[fullphaser]

Social networking sites can exist within a niche. In fact, if they want to compete, they probably should.

Facebook had it great when it was restricted to college students, but now that they are opening to everyone, they're in MySpace land.

Yes, mabye an age niche, but a topic niche would be about impossible, at that point, it is pretty much just a forum right?

[Clenard]

Social networking sites can exist within a niche. In fact, if they want to compete, they probably should.

Facebook had it great when it was restricted to college students, but now that they are opening to everyone, they're in MySpace land.

Indeed... but Social Networking Communities don't need to be as tight of a niche as Forums. For instance - imagine starting a forum for college students ... ?

...Wouldn't succeed.

Yet, Social Networking Communities can. While nobody can tell you exactly why each person chooses a SNC over a forum - most can assure you it's the fact that in an SNC - you either have a picture and let people know who you are or go away...bottom line. While this may not make sense - a Forum is just "less trustworthy" and takes alot longer time to get to know a person. Right now Forums are fading away while Social Networking Communities are the "latest fad" or hype. With that being said - a forum is going to be less popular and needs to be a tighter niche by "users choice" rather than the webmaster.

A Social Networking Community, IMHO, will beat a forum registration rate 5-1 in any niche everytime. This should be great news to anyone who really wants to start a community.

Don't get me wrong though... the big SNC hype will be gone soon too! Then it will be just as hard to create a tight niche, even more of a topic style community.

But, it's a matter of choice at this point... I think starting forums (in most cases) are a waste of time for those starting fresh. Most forums I've been to dealing with Music are steadily going down hill because they aren't pushing forward. Once someone comes along with a SNC style Sitepoint - the forums will slowly fade in this niche too.

Going back to your original statement about Facebook - I would even put money on it that if you did some a/b split testing on 4 forums and 4 social networking communities that all 4 of the forums wouldn't combine to be as many members as the weakest one of the SNC's ... on any given niche.

Take it as you will... but as it is - SNC's are new and exciting and people are barely getting used to them... Forums are old and boring and everybody has seen them a million times.

[english-test.net]

I think the real difference between a forum and a SNC is not the software but the philosophy and managment style of its owners. A so called Social Networking Community doesn't thrive because of the sofware. It grows and develops because of the ideas and strategy of the people behind it. You don't say "Hey let's just network, here is the latest software platform." and expect people to join. Let's say they do join, what are you going to do with and for them? What can you do with them that you can't do on a forum? Social networking communities existed long before computers came into being, what makes you think that technology is a guarantee for a successful community? The Amish have been around for more than 100 years and their community has been growing without any technology.

[Clenard]

I think the real difference between a forum and a SNC is not the software but the philosophy and managment style of its owners. A so called Social Networking Community doesn't thrive because of the sofware. It grows and develops because of the ideas and strategy of the people behind it. You don't say "Hey let's just network, here is the latest software platform." and expect people to join. Let's say they do join, what are you going to do with and for them? What can you do with them that you can't do on a forum? Social networking communities existed long before computers came into being, what makes you think that technology is a guarantee for a successful community? The Amish have been around for more than 100 years and their community has been growing without any technology.

Yes, and how many times have you been tempted to become amish? Never? and why not? Because it looks boring you say? Much like forums do for alot of people now'n'days.

I never said that "software" itself is what makes the community - it's what the software DOES that becomes the deciding factor.

What can you do on an SNC and not a forum? For one - SNC's are like "groups" of people who DEMAND to see faces or else they will not chat... period. On a forum - you don't need that and therefore people may chat but never become as close as they will by seeing pictures, private messaging, etc. It may sound odd - but the fact remains that there is NO FORUM ONLINE that can compare with myspace, friendster, facebook, hi5, bebo, 360 or any other SNC out there. I don't care WHO owns what... a forum is a forum, plain and simple. While the technology may be there - it's like packing everything in a cell phone down to the size of a dime...it just may not be as noticable and people are just "bored" in general with forums, for the most part. You can't expect the Telephone to have a line plugged into the wall forever... you can't expect laptops to look the way they do now - 10 years from now. People demand change and those that do change: win.

[english-test.net]

Well, I think we are talking of different things here. A forum is a place where people share their expertise and find questions to specific answers. On a forum the mental energy is more important that showing faces and chatting somebody up. Take Sitepoint for example. Would the value of the discussions going on herer automatically increase by adding a couple of software features and demanding people show their faces? What do you mean by "no forum online can compare with myspace etc.? Don't you think that places like Webmasterworld are geared toward a different kind of folks than friendster and co.? Don't you think that the purpose of a project determines its contents rather than a software platform?

[Dravis]

Excellent discussion guys all your insight is really helpful.

My site is in a niche but it's a broad niche: internet marketing. Pretty much anything related to making money online. So the goal is for a community of people to come together who have a common interest of making some extra money (or a living) from home on their PCs. The niche is so huge though because there's hundreds of ways to make money online such as affiliate programs, adsense, blogging, ebooks, selling scripts etc.

It is a bit different than a "social networking" site in that it's really more of a social news site like ****. Users do create accounts but they don't really edit their own personal page. They submit news, or articles they've written, or links to their sites, products etc. They can add other users of the site to their profile as friends though to see what news they're finding interesting.

Clint,
I have created a MySpace page but haven't done anything with it yet. You said to go ahead and add friends, but by what method? Should I just randomly add people or is there a way to search for people interested in internet marketing and add them as friends. Is it legal to post a link to my site in my MySpace profile? I thought advertising was frowned upon there.

Any other ideas for promotion? I'm guessing there's plenty of folks here who'd be interested in promoting each others IM projects but I don't want to be "that newbie" who bursts into the forums spamming his new site.

Also the site is running on a heavily modified version of Pligg.

[Clenard]

Excellent discussion guys all your insight is really helpful.

My site is in a niche but it's a broad niche: internet marketing. Pretty much anything related to making money online. So the goal is for a community of people to come together who have a common interest of making some extra money (or a living) from home on their PCs. The niche is so huge though because there's hundreds of ways to make money online such as affiliate programs, adsense, blogging, ebooks, selling scripts etc.

It is a bit different than a "social networking" site in that it's really more of a social news site like ****. Users do create accounts but they don't really edit their own personal page. They submit news, or articles they've written, or links to their sites, products etc. They can add other users of the site to their profile as friends though to see what news they're finding interesting.

Clint,
I have created a MySpace page but haven't done anything with it yet. You said to go ahead and add friends, but by what method? Should I just randomly add people or is there a way to search for people interested in internet marketing and add them as friends. Is it legal to post a link to my site in my MySpace profile? I thought advertising was frowned upon there.

Any other ideas for promotion? I'm guessing there's plenty of folks here who'd be interested in promoting each others IM projects but I don't want to be "that newbie" who bursts into the forums spamming his new site.

Also the site is running on a heavily modified version of Pligg.

Well, I definately don't think having links on your page is frowned upon since 99% of myspace is filled with links to other sites. lol Most people have images, layouts, etc from other sites with links on them and I would say 25% of the community promotes another site (knowingly) in one way or another. This is the beauty of "Social Networking".

I would start out finding people on the Forums or Groups in myspace that are a part of Internet Marketing Discussions. This should be very easy to be honest as I'm definately active in Internet Marketing and see there's a TON of groups in myspace along with forum discussions.

Try creating your own group with the title of your site - and then create another with keywords for your site & group and do some split testing to see which one is easier to promote. In these groups - you're definately allowed to promote your site as Groups are basically "fan groups" anyways.

[cshadden]

I saw PHPFox promoted earlier, and as much as I've heard good things about PHPFox, I stick to the ASP and .NET (C#) side when I can.

I have a few communities in development using the system from aspplayground.net. What I like about this suite is the usability of groups similar to that of YahooGroup while still giving the social networking features of a Facebook style site. Though I will be making considerable modifications to fit my needs,

I am disgusted by the messy MySpace style pages that users tend to build, so this software suite does not feature the ability for users to customize their pages to the level that PHPFox does, but it works better for my usage.

They are comparably priced to PHPFox, so if you are fluent on the Microsoft side I would recommend checking that suite out.

[Clenard]

I saw PHPFox promoted earlier, and as much as I've heard good things about PHPFox, I stick to the ASP and .NET (C#) side when I can.

I have a few communities in development using the system from aspplayground.net. What I like about this suite is the usability of groups similar to that of YahooGroup while still giving the social networking features of a Facebook style site. Though I will be making considerable modifications to fit my needs,

I am disgusted by the messy MySpace style pages that users tend to build, so this software suite does not feature the ability for users to customize their pages to the level that PHPFox does, but it works better for my usage.

They are comparably priced to PHPFox, so if you are fluent on the Microsoft side I would recommend checking that suite out.

I'm curious as to why you would take away a function such as letting users create/edit their own profiles the way they want? Is it a personal opinion?

Just wondering since that's probably one of the biggest features of sites such as MySpace?