It’s not 2010 anymore — social media is different.
This short article is originated from two posts on Indie Hacker about the cold start problem: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/its-not-2010-anymore-social-media-is-different-318c88394f?commentId=-MwZgNiKvG6aq4GSaluo
The theme is right in the headline — It’s not 2010 anymore, building a new social media is almost impossible.
Why? Because all social media provides is PEOPLE. You try to gather around a group of people who rely on the sole existence of themselves.
We’re in 2022. Our every day is flooded with content. Every morning I wake up, I check my WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, emails, newsletter, news app, discord group, Linkedin. If you’re building social media, you’re competing directly with all of them, even they all look very different and unrelated. But then it all competing on the same thing — our attention time span.
And with more and more options of content online our attention time span is getting shorter and shorter. This Youtube video is too slow? Skip. This slack channel is too dead? Quit. You will slowly find out the tolerance of staying on new social platforms is very low nowadays (but it’s also why Stories, Tiktok succeed). Trying to make a new social group now is just an extremely uphill task. In social media — People make content, people consume content. If no one consumes content, no one makes content anymore. It doesn’t matter how many fancy features you build — it is only built to encourage people to make content. As a result, you have to rely on people to provide value to other people. It can make your product skyrocket, it can also make your product straight to the ground — Best example? Clubhouse.
Be careful and don’t mix up here. Because, if your product has great utilities like a two-sided marketplace (reselling, finding jobs) Then, it would be easier. Cause people now come to GET THEIR JOB DONE, no matter they want to sell their car, or find a job. In this sense, your product is not selling the people anymore, you are selling a service to help someone do what they want, just the solution involved people. That’s why local Facebook groups for reselling usually works well — but then the retention rate might vary. (Who sells their stuff every day?)
Backstory: Jupitrr, my company was once a business networking app aka Tinder for business. And I guess you know what it meant if you read till here. It flopped, big time. Everyone comes here for their own purpose, while when they can’t provide value to each other, they don’t come back. And you can’t really change anything with it but try to nurture a good environment, facilitate engagement, try to help out from all angles. It’s like you are the manager of the sports team — you can do loads of stuff, except playing on the pitch.
