Working on a new community and a question...

So I started a new vBulletin-based community today after I decided that vBCodex needs to be placed on hold until the Alpha release of vBulletin 4.

Anyway, this new community will focus on Social Groups, Blogs, and User Profiles. The forums will be secondary and only used for support. The primary focus will actually be Social Groups and that is the first thing that users will see when they visit the site.

So my question is... What do you look for in a niche Social Networking site?

I am not out to compete with the likes of Facebook, Twitter or MySpace but will feature some similar functionality as well as let users tie their accounts to those services.

 

I honestly have not quite understood how Social Groups is supposed to work on vB. I have hesitated to turn it on, because it is confusing to members to pull back a feature if it doesn't work out productively.

But I do think you are on to what people tend to value most in a forum, and that's the social interaction. They can read information about their interest anywhere, they come to forums to connect with other people. And they like bolstering their own image with user profile customization, avatars and the like. Signatures are hugely popular on my forum.

I think one of the things people would most like to have is a "private" forum - a forum within a forum viewable only to people they select. Quite a few people would really like to have a discussion just with those forum members who are like-minded. They tire of dealing with all the differing opinions about micro-topics they think they have figured out. Although they will publicly discuss other topics, and prefer the 'big board' mos to of the time.

I had hoped to make Blog the members' "private" forum-lets. However, the Friends concept isn't designed as it needs to be for that to work. Mostly because of the name "Friends." No one can politely refuse any offer to be a Friend (especially on a forum that is mostly women as mine is.) And the Friends are visible to all. What is needed is a member-designated private group with access to their Blog that isn't publicly viewable. No one else needs to know they even have a Blog, much less who is in it. THAT would stick a lot of people to my forum for longer periods.

To re-constitute Friends on my forum I would have to pull it back entirely and re-name and re-permission it, or something. It will mightly confuse and probably offend the forum members - at this time it isn't worth it. I'm hoping a re-thought Blog permissions is coming sometime in the 4 series because I've seen other admins say the same on the vB bull board.

Anyway ... sorry for the ramble, but private member-admin'ed sub-forums is an idea you might be interested in.

And btw I don't think 'private forums' will detract from the overall forum - that's just an opinion. It might cut down on unpleasantness if they can rant privately. Several members of my forum actually have private yahoo groups and it hasn't changed anything on my forum, except they would spend more time on my forum (looking at my forum's ads) if they had their private forum there, instead of on yahoo.

 

This is exactly the need that I see Social Groups fulfilling. They can be public, private, or invite-only. As an administrator, I don't need to create, moderator or maintain them. The group owner does that.

So say Sally decides to open a book club with people she knows your forum. She can create a website herself or use another service or she can create that group on your site and continue visiting your site. Others who join don't have to visit another website and continue to visit your site. You win because you don't lose eyeballs and gain pageviews. If someone else comes along later and wants to join the book club, they can. If Sally made the group private than she would approve or deny them access. If denied, the person can create their own book club or drop the issue.

The site that I am envisioning is going to be completely community oriented. I could go create a couple dozen forums for different topics or I could let people create their own groups for the topics they want. Not only that but I am going to allow them to customize their groups as well similarly to how they can customize Blogs and their User Profile. This allows them to create their own mini-websites which they can promote and market my site for me.

 

I am really interested in how your vision works out. I have had similar thoughts for awhile. Once people are part of the forum community they'd like to discuss broader topics with the same people. Then some decide that they want to also discuss a few topics with a few people more privately. Why not do it on the forum they already visit addictively? My "off-topic" sub-forum has 196,000+ posts, the next largest sub-forum has almost 110,000, the others are far behind (although equally important to the faithful.) The off-topic is where EVERYTHING is discussed, including politics, religion, news stories, personal issues ...

I do think it's the off-topic that has made that forum like selling opium to the most faithful members - they have to have it. They say so all the time. Some time ago the mods looked on the off-topic as an expendable pain. I hope I've corrected that thinking.

Activating the customizable profile and visitor messaging increased the attachment and brought newer members into the fold faster. Quite a few members have made visiting and posting light remarks in each other's vm's an endless game. It's also how they welcome new members they like more personally. Part of the game is playing with and commenting on the colors.

 

I'm also generous with photo attachments. And keeping the historical threads and posts accessible and intact with any photos. This particular forum thrives on that stuff - they see it as their stuff, "their" posts & threads with "their" photos. Server space for it all is cheap compared with constantly turning over members who begin to loose interest when they loose the continuity of the historical matter.

 

I have been working with forums for over a decade and I believe that the paradigm for community networking needs to change. Forums still have their place but we have a new more sophisticated audience that demands more. This is evidenced by Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo Groups! Google Groups and even blogs like Windows Live Spaces, Blogger and WordPress.

Facebook is the largest social networking site there is today and gets 200 million unique visits a month. The user's not only drive the traffic but they create the content of the site. Yahoo Groups! send over 1 Billion emails a month plus allow file uploads, picture sharing and more. Google's Groups have over 1 million organizations on its site sharing information both public and private. There are over 400 million individual bloggers producing billions of articles a year. None of them have really successful forums. Mainly because forums are not needed.

Now, I don't propose that I will be able to create a site that rivals them. If it gets a few thousand members and a couple hundred groups, then I will consider it a success. However using groups over forums doesn't prevent users from sharing pictures, posting on their walls, sharing events on the calendar and so forth. The groups will be the "Off-Topic" forum and the "On-Topic" forums. Created by the people for almost any topic they desire within the major scope of the site.

I think that this new paradigm which puts the user in control will ultimately allow ideas to exchanged more freely. While it would be hard to scale a site with several hundred forums that interest a few dozen people each, a groups based site does this perfectly.

I'll also be writing a case study on the experience and publishing it on another website that I own. Though I believe we have strayed very far from the primary question first posed.

 

I keep replying because you keep saying things I think are right on. I do want to keep up with where you go with this.

The way I think of it is that forum software is not a community, people are the community. It doesn't matter if they are sitting around a campfire or at a table at Bennigans or posting in a forum. The software just enables the thing that they really want. The most beautifully programmed forum software means nothing without the elements that attach people to a community of people - the social networking you a re talking about. That's mo.

In this era where many people don't know their neighbors, and spend more time online both expanding their interests and finding people who share those particular interests, I think there's a huge unmet appetite for what you are working on.

The other thing I would add is subject matters of interest. Some people like talking to other people about anything, others only want to discuss what interests them. Many like exploring to find new interests, or new areas of their current fascinations. A hook to draw people into a community can be the opportunity to explore for new areas of interest as well as old, and then discuss those interests online with others who are knowledgeable. The Big Board of Everything ...