Three Ways to Screw Up a Social Media Community

Today's Wall Street Journal reports on the decline in the rate of membership growth at the major social-networking sites like MySpace and Facebook.  From the Journal:

Both MySpace and Facebook lost visitors in September, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, a Web-tracking service. The number of unique U.S. visitors at MySpace fell 4% to 47.2 million from 49.2 million in August, and the number of visitors to Facebook fell 12% to 7.8 million from 8.9 million.

While it may be a seasonal drop due to students going back to school, there may be something important happening here and there are several key points to take away from the data.

First, social networking communities are for real and not about to fade away.  They are likely to morph quite a bit in years to come as the citizens themselves define and redefine the medium.  But, as community membership becomes more common place, and the choices of communities more expansive, citizens will naturally relocate to sites that more narrowly meet their evolving needs and interests.  As communities of interest spring up around just about every whim, or as people travel through different phases of life, there will be a redistribution of the membership rosters at the major sites.  This is a natural part of the cycle of technology adoption.  Parking your profile someplace is a very personal matter, and in some ways a defining act.  You can expect many people to test the waters in the major communities, then settle in at a site that better reflects their personalities and passions.  Sports, hobby, regional and subject matter communities will proliferate.  Their growth will clearly come at the expense of today's leaders.

Second, what is driving many people from, say MySpace, are the same things that are turning them off from other forms of media: imposition marketing and inauthenticity.  Spam is on the rise at many community sites, as are invitations from faux friends.  Members who joined for the social benefits a site provides are very quick to bail if the "hassle taxes" of citizenship get too high.  For MySpace in particular, keeping abusive spamming and advertising in check will be key to citizen loyalty.

As the utility of social network communities becomes fully realized, the major sites will lose members unless:

• they evolve faster than their citizens,
• refrain from turning people off by violating the rules of Bubble Generation etiquette, and
• provide a more compelling forum for individuality than the next site.