Sunday, May 07, 2006

How to be an effective social network website?

I always get email from Linked in, friendster,and other social websites. Now there is a new website named wealink, started by one of my VC friends Issac. After a round of Internet bubble, the trend now comes to the Internet's social level, more complicated but easier understood by common people.

When I discussed with Lutz Winter, a German Internet enterpreneur, last week, we just agreed that the social network needs to provide more personal details. You couldn't imagine that two strangers could become friends in reality finally without any knowledge of the other. For example, it is always easy to make friends through blogs; after reading one's blog for a while, it is easier to understand the blogger and his/her thought and then next step, be the friends. If social websites could do something just like blog does, it will be much better.

For instance, if I get some messages from people who wanna to be my friends, then the website should provide some functions like trial period, to give me some time to read his/her blogs to really know the person. After that, it will be up to my mind to meet her or not. Then it will be more perfect.

1 comment:

Lutz_W said...

At the moment most business networking portals like LinkedIn are eventually getting into the way of communication, rather than fostering communication between their members. Plus they all have some kind of "walled garden" approach when it comes to their members' data. Which is quite understandable, as their need to have some kind of premium model forces them to put up such restrictions.

Sorry, but after a quick glance, wealink seems to be quite a LinkedIn-clone, IMO. Maybe a fresher approach is needed. But good luck to them anyway...

:) <- Lutz

PS: Stowe Boyd lately suggested that somebody would need to come up with something for the sphere of business-networking exactly like what MySpace did for social networks... I couldn't agree more.