Why I Moved Social to Homepage. A Road to a Network Business — Startup Week 19
Prioritizing the core feature is a problem for many users. How easy it becomes if you know which functionality will push your baby into a killer app.
Over the months of development, I’ve developed many pages into Kaffae. It has a social feed, discovery feed, personal dashboard, and many others. That’s a proof of my hardwork. But there are too many functionalities that have not nailed it with my users. The problem has been my inability to decide on which page to bring as the first page of the website.
Life would have been a piece of cake, if everyone agrees on which functionalities they liked.
Instead, everyone had different opinions of what they liked in the apps. Obviously they each wanted their favorite features to come on the first page. Kaffae doesn’t have enough user data to make democracy, where the majority rules.
Even with this lack of proper feedback analysis, I could make sense of the 2 types of feedback. One that’s coming from heavy users and the others not. Based on that distinction, I decided to switch the landing page to the social feed.
I want to share how I did the prioritization in this scenario to serve everyone equally happy.
Focus on Long Lasting Business
I heard from Y Combinator lectures over and over; if you are not growing, you are dying. That’s true. Startups don’t go anywhere without the growth because you are starting from zero. The status quo is not an option. But at the same time, retention is equally important. You want users to keep accumulating.
In fact, the famous PayPal founder, Peter Thiel says in Zero To One; as much as the growth is important, you should ask yourself if your company exists 10 years from now. That is because your software startup generates the value far out into the future. He brings an example of Facebook as a long lasting business. The given example of not a long-lasting business was Groupon, whose stock price fell to 1/6 since the IPO and never recovered even after 7 years.
I cant help but agreeing, seeing how everyone still uses Facebook even after millions of backlashes in the past 5 years. Facebook is extremely sticky.
What is Network Business?
For our purpose, I’ll define network business as a completely useless app in the beginning, until you use it for 1 month when you become connected with friends. The platform is even more useful when you start connecting with new friends.
Examples of Network Business
- Goodreads
Example of Nonnetwork Business
- Google Search
- Amazon
- YouTube
- Evernote
- Medium
Both categories are very powerful businesses.
As you notice, the difference is when you signup, network businesses give you a blank page. Nonnetwork business give you full of information and interactivity upfront.
From my experience, most people push the advice to go for the non-network business. They want to see the value upfront. At the same time, those people never understand why people take the time to tweet their lives or why you upload your cute pets’ photos. If you are in the community of startups, you soon notice they (we) are dominated by productivity biases. So, it’s safe to assume those are dumb talk (short term advice).
Network businesses become extremely sticky the more of your friends join. It’s 0 or 100 approach. Nonnetwork business is more prone for a substitute so they invest heavily into their technology to stay ahead in the competition.
Personal Experience with Goodreads
Of the mentioned, Goodreads is the app I’ve followed the typical social app curve. It is a platform for book readers.
I’ve used it when my friend recommended it. In the beginning, I simply thought of it as a useful tool to keep a record of my past books. About 1 year in, I learned that writing about what you’ve read is a powerful way to retain information. So I started reviewing the books in the platform. It was just a few sentences in the beginning like this book is terrible (I know it’s a terrible review).
Up to this point, I just thought it’s cool other friends have read the same book as I did, but never paid that much attention to the social feature. Of course, it’s kind of cool to read reviews before buying a book.
And over time, the reviews started to become several paragraphs. The turning point has been about 3 years since I started using the platform. I actively invited people whenever my friend is talking about books.
I followed the typical transformation from the novice book readers to heavily invested personal users.
Discovery Page vs Social Feed
I used to put discovery as the landing page. You can start reading new articles right away regardless of if you have friends in the platform or not.
My thinking was to put the value right away.
After the 3 months of experiments and collecting data, I came to conclude that people clicked on the articles right after the signup, but they rarely came back to the discovery page.
Since Kaffae is still self-complete with just the extension, I concluded only the heavy users would be logging into the platform frequently. And heavy users were more willing to connect with other people and value the social features. I decided to give attention to core users. So, I switched the landing page with the social feed that shows a blank page unless you follow other people.
To Make Social Successful
For this app’s social network to work, I need to work on several things
- Trigger Points
- Expressivity
Trigger Points
Social apps rely on people inviting people in the real lives. Facebook seems the most generic social network out there but the idea was having an online avatar when not everyone was online (Yes, I was in highschool when it came out, when people were still experimenting what they can do online from videogames to messaging). There was an incentive to get people to talk online.
Goodreads’ trigger point is simpler. I invite people whenever they are reading a book, or we are talking about a book. One of my friends a few days ago was sharing her book on Instagram Story, so I started talking about a book and invited her to Goodreads.
Kaffae is still weak on that theme I admit. I’ve been wanting to push for article reading, but that’s a very weak grouping, which I rarely talk with my friends. We only talk about the content of the article such as Trump election. It needs a different trigger point.
What I am testing now is around remembering trigger points. I’m hoping people especially students talk about how they study for exams. Or adults talk about how to progress their careers. And Kaffae can position itself as a tool to help that process.
Expressivity
I had a long time philosophy to make people’s work less. So I intentionally removed all input intake from the platform. But in reality, humans like to express ourselves and connect with others on through what you did. All social network spins around that idea. Instead of making our lives easier (productivity), it’s making our lives richer (expressivity/connection).
I admit, I invite people on Goodreads because I’m so invested into the platform through my reviews. I guess my ego wants to share my work in a way. That’s the reason people convince others to join social network.
So far, Kaffae is very automated with feed pulling in content that the extension tracks (default is hidden). I’d like to add a lot more input points. One thing I’m testing is the reviewing of not the articles (but surely you can) but on publications. Publication/blog review sites currently do not exist. Kaffae with its tracking, you can tell exactly how much that person has read with that blog creating validity in his claim. And it’d be certainly nice to flag good publications to start reading from.
Another expression I’m thinking is a place to share your daily learning. I got this idea from Reddit’s TIL (Today I Learned) forum where you can share what you’ve learned today. Since Kaffae gives you a reminder of what you’ve read daily, reflecting and knowing what you’ve learned has never been easier. Kaffae users can share their daily learning with the platform.
New Contender in Network Business: Tiktok
Tiktok is often considered as the video version of Instagram. But it’s actually really different in how they approach their positioning.
As I mentioned, Instagram starts off with social feed. If you are not following anyone, the feed is useless. Likewise, you will be constantly getting a suggestion of your Facebook friends to follow.
Tiktok starts off with trends and discovery page. You can be immersed into fun content the moment you join the app. Social is just a secondary feature for the core fun to follow influencers and help tweak their suggestion algorithm. In fact, on their webapp, they don’t have any page for the users you follow.
The difference seems subtle, but the message is clear. Tiktok is about media. It’s a broadcast app.
Tiktok is a brand new contender that’s blurred the line. It seems like a hybrid between Instagram and YouTube in terms of sociability. This may be because of how social apps operate in China. But I see this hybrid model as the new trend to watch for. I’ll be looking into turning the social feed into a more hybrid model with discovery.
PS: I just received a Twitter message from a user who wanted to have friends section activity on the sidebar just like Spotify. This social seems like a way to go:)
