24 DOs and DON’Ts for Building the Next Facebook

Follow these simple rules to avoid ridicule and disaster.

Social networks enable users to create, share, and engage with content. It’s that simple, yet incredibly difficult to get right.

Entrepreneurs do all sorts of counterproductive things en route to success. Below are a two dozen arbitrarily chosen but utterly essential guidelines to follow and sophistries to avoid on your way to building the next big thing.

DISCLAIMER: USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

DON’T

Don’t eat yellow snow. — Frank Zappa/Dad

1. Don’t ask users to broadcast private things they would never share in real life. Why are you broadcasting your credit card purchases and exact coordinates? Weirdo.

2. Don’t be the bitch of other networks. At Sonar, we “solved” the ghost town problem by aggregating content from other services. Not only did it feel unnatural and siphon off our user’s energy, we were eventually completely cut off. Stop investing in other networks and focus on building your own.

3. Don’t kid yourself into thinking that paid ‘marketing’ to going solve your growth problem. Buying ads for your social network is like paying people to come to your lame party. Fix your product, then advertise it.

4. Don’t obsess over your ‘algorithms.’ I know of no social network whose success stemmed from superior algorithms. In fact, please stop talking about your algorithms altogether.

5. Don’t pretend that adding a “share to facebook” widget makes your product ‘a social calculator/weather app/whatever.’

6. Don’t equate sending push notifications with retaining users. Pushes and email can remind users that your app exists but it’s their call from there. If no one hangs out in your app it’s probably because there’s nothing fun to do there. Pestering people to visit your empty, boring app is a great way convince users to delete you and never come back.

7. Don’t beg users to use your product. You are in the business of providing value, not asking for favors. Spend that energy improving your product.

8. Don’t put the cart before the horse. Lock down your core user interaction, then build derivative features like an API.

9. Don’t chase unsustainable growth just to get VC money. VCs are means to an end. Move to Washington, D.C. if you want to be rewarded for unsustainable growth.

10. Don’t assume that growth will always be enough. There are plenty of companies that grew rapidly but failed to build sustainable businesses. Either figure out how to get people to stick around or flip that sh*t to Yahoo ASAP.

DO

Do… or do not. There is no try. — Yoda

1.Build something worth sharing. I eagerly share Dropbox because I use it every day and I want to use it with my friends. The storage I get for signing them up is icing on the cake. Same goes for Skype, Rapportive, Evernote, etc.

2. Make it easier to share the things you already share. People share code, pictures, and music…Github, Instagram, and Spotify just make it easier.

3. Go broad before you go deep. Lightweight, flexible products can spread quickly. Weighed down with features, they become rigid and confusing. Your 21st feature is unlikely to ‘go viral.’

4. Think deeply about the content your network creates. Twitter users create 140-character messages (tweets). Foursquare users create posts that announce a their location (check-ins). Pinterest users create visual bookmarks (Pins). Your atomic unit of content MUST be 1) created easily, 2) shared often, and 3) fun to engage with.

5. Build tools that becomes more powerful the more you use them. Each new LinkedIn connection provides access to hundreds of professionals that you previously may not have been able to reach. The more you tweet→the more people follow you→the more distribution you have for your thoughts and ideas→ the more positive feedback you receive→the more you tweet. My girlfriend @BryceLongton’s Pinboard landed her a job curing @Food52's online store.

6. Simplify your UX to ignite engagement. How quickly can your users create, share, and receive feedback from the network? The dating app Tinder creates a user profile w/ one click, then pushes that profile in front of hundreds of nearby users who must rate it w/ a simple swipe…all within seconds of signup. The best app is a button that you press to get laid or get paid. These guys nailed it.

7. Get out of your users’ way. At Sonar, we were so terrified that users would unintentionally hit (then confirm) the “invite all” button that we nearly didn’t include it. That would have been a mistake. “Invite all” generated >50% of our invites…tens of thousands a day. Apparently, the type of person that has 5,854 phone contacts is exactly the type of person that hits “invite all.”

8. Get obsessed about growth. At Sonar, I got the chance to hear Sean Parker give a blistering six hour soliloquy on viral loops, viral mechanics, and viral quotients. The next day, I heard him give another speech on the same topic. By the third day, I asked someone if this was how it always was. He said “Yes.” A maniacal focus on growth isn’t myopic, it’s necessary. The only thing that’s insane is thinking that your tiny team is going to reach millions of people without spending 150% of your time on it.

9. Do the math. Unclear on the difference between SAC, LTV, ARPU, and DAUs? Better crack the books.

10. Beware of the cost of your time when evaluating customer acquisition channels. At Sonar we barely spent a dime on on Facebook and Google ads bc our tests showed that our Cost of Customer Acquisition (CAC) was too high. Instead, we spent a ton of time chasing “free” but laborious opportunities such as speaking at conferences and talking to the press. Remember, nothing is free-measure both dollars and time spent.

11. Hustling means contacting people you don’t know. Sonar got selected for TC Disrupt because I emailed everyone in my my networks and my friends’ networks that had any connection to Arrington. In a few days, we were skype chatting. The next time you are afraid of what strangers might think, look at yourself in the mirror ask yourself if you would be happy if a stranger sent you your own app. If the answer is yes, fire away. The only thing you have to fear is not figuring out how to grow.

12. Let other people decide if you are spamming. I don’t know of a social network that didn’t “cheat” a little bit to stoke growth. MySpace founders aggressively invited users from their personal accounts. Badoo partnered with publishers to email users looking at classified ads. Spam isn’t spam if it is honest and converts well; that’s just good marketing.

13. Money, Talent, or Growth. Pick two. Ideally you can assemble a close-knit team with the skills, runway, and fortitude necessary to iterate quietly and tirelessly until you achieve product-market fit. Otherwise…

14. Fake it till you make it. Puff out your chest, get a bunch of press, and never release your numbers. I would have loved to have found product/market fit at Sonar before raising but I had neither the team nor resources. Though investors are significantly more metric savvy than they were in the past, this approach surprisingly still helps to attract resources both financial and human, probably because it implies that you are capable of executing on something (getting press), even if it’s not the right thing (getting users).

“A million users isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A billion users.”- Sean Parker’s Character in The Social Network

Onward.