reflections on a startup social network
So if you haven’t seen this site befuckingawesome.com, its a pretty amazing idea, make the world a better place by doing “awesome” things, quite benevolent. The problem is, that like many start-ups the market can eventually define the platform, not the other way around, and what you start out building can evolve considerably from the original plan or vision. Sometimes you accept this evolution as the stars aligning and you grab on to the railing, snap on your seat belt, and watch the world unfold. . . this has happened many times over, from our friends at Wild Tangent (which started as a game developer), to many of the current ad networks, to much more. . . most of the time for the better. . . Wild Tangent is now a very success game aggregation platform and game ad network. And other times you hit a bump loose complete control, but eventually you get back on track and your company/product/platform returns to where you wanted it to be, and you make it out a little scathed, a little tired, but a lot smarter.
This is a great post about that.
A Social Network Built Around Doing Good But With An F-Bomb In Its Name? What The F Am I Thinking?!
Ambitious. That’s one thing it could be called. Stupid. That’s another. But after two weeks being live with Be Fucking Awesome dot com – the first social network designed for doing good – I’m choosing to simply call it A MASSIVE LEARNING EXPERIENCE.
It’s been a ride. That’s for sure. At first it was all good. We got some exciting press courtesy Josh Spear. He’s got a big blog following and his review was pretty sweet. Thanks Josh. Then we got a great write-up on the front page of the Denver Egotist. Very nice. And we got a couple of other nice web-press-hits too. And our Google Analytics were looking good. This was just one week in, and it was feeling nothing short of FA.
Then week two started. I was hoping for more press and promotion, more steady growth of new users and FAdeeds. Well, being raised at CP+B I’m just like a lot of Crispinites – I never learn. This time the lesson that I hadn’t learned was “be careful what you ask for.” Because last Tuesday the 6th, we got more press. This time from Asylum.com – another glowing review. Pretty cool, right? Well… let’s just say that depends on who you ask. Because all of a sudden, our burgeoning userbase went from a demographic of those who cleary understood that the site was about posting good deeds, to one full of Maxim-magazine fratboy types who were into it to post stuff that they thought was funny or “awesome” from a “I just took a giant shit” or “I just banged two chicks” POV. And not only did this demographic get into it, they LOVED it. On Tuesday the 6th alone we had something like 12,000 views and at one time more than 1,000 concurrent users. But the content being posted spawned a major dilemma for me. “Do I ride it out? Do I trust the system? What if so many of this new type is onboard now that they’ll hush the others? What if they vote up the nonsense FAdeeds to the point where it gets out of the original vision entirely? Do I edit it? Do I delete posts and kick people off the site? But wait… they’re not WRONG. Nowhere does it dictate what is an “awesome deed” and it’s open to interpretation… What do I DO? Have we created a MONSTER?!”
Picture 26
Ambitious. That’s one thing it could be called. Stupid. That’s another. But after two weeks being live with Be Fucking Awesome dot com – the first social network designed for doing good – I’m choosing to simply call it A MASSIVE LEARNING EXPERIENCE.
It’s been a ride. That’s for sure. At first it was all good. We got some exciting press courtesy Josh Spear. He’s got a big blog following and his review was pretty sweet. Thanks Josh. Then we got a great write-up on the front page of the Denver Egotist. Very nice. And we got a couple of other nice web-press-hits too. And our Google Analytics were looking good. This was just one week in, and it was feeling nothing short of FA.
Then week two started. I was hoping for more press and promotion, more steady growth of new users and FAdeeds. Well, being raised at CP+B I’m just like a lot of Crispinites – I never learn. This time the lesson that I hadn’t learned was “be careful what you ask for.” Because last Tuesday the 6th, we got more press. This time from Asylum.com – another glowing review. Pretty cool, right? Well… let’s just say that depends on who you ask. Because all of a sudden, our burgeoning userbase went from a demographic of those who cleary understood that the site was about posting good deeds, to one full of Maxim-magazine fratboy types who were into it to post stuff that they thought was funny or “awesome” from a “I just took a giant shit” or “I just banged two chicks” POV. And not only did this demographic get into it, they LOVED it. On Tuesday the 6th alone we had something like 12,000 views and at one time more than 1,000 concurrent users. But the content being posted spawned a major dilemma for me. “Do I ride it out? Do I trust the system? What if so many of this new type is onboard now that they’ll hush the others? What if they vote up the nonsense FAdeeds to the point where it gets out of the original vision entirely? Do I edit it? Do I delete posts and kick people off the site? But wait… they’re not WRONG. Nowhere does it dictate what is an “awesome deed” and it’s open to interpretation… What do I DO? Have we created a MONSTER?!”
