New Social Media Platform

[flamboyant]

Hi guys,

After reading MJ's book, I've made some decisions. They still need to prove that they were good, but I'm very confident regarding that.

- I "paused" university and started working 60% instead of 40%
- I'm moving to a 50% job, which pays me a little less salary, but I'll get more time during work for my own business
- I started a IT consulting startup, which gives me about once a month a decent job (about $5-10k, can be done mostly on weekends) for additional money. If it goes well, I should see about 10-20k per month on a regular basis
- The money from my startup is invested in creating new things: next project is a social media platform for students.

Now my question is, what do you think of social media platforms? I know there have been MANY and most of them disappeared. In my case however, I'm very confident because of following variables:
I live in a small country (Switzerland) where you can quickly reach people - and more importantly, we're a few years behind most other countries regarding many technology-related topics, e.g. USA

The platform is about students who can share their thoughts related to their current university. Doing market research, creating a business plan, etc. was too much fluff for me so I decided to develop (I'm a programmer myself) a prototype (will be finished in one month) and see how that goes. The money I'll be investing is in mobile application development to get a working product before september, right before the schools launch again.

Has anyone done something similar before and had success? What are your tipps? How did you get the people to join your platform? Or maybe more interesting, if you didn't have success, what went wrong?

Thank you.

 

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[theag]

I'm a student (in Switzerland) and I don't see what value such a platform would bring.

Generally speaking, social media surely is very saturated, which doesn't mean that there are no opportunities, but in my opinion a platform for sharing thoughts about your university isn't one of them.

A platform for choosing the university best fit for you though might be a great opportunity (at least in German speaking countries). When I researched universities I used uni-protokolle.de a lot, but its just a forum and you have to dig for good information. Then there is squeaker.net, but they mainly provide info for students already at university looking for a high-profile career in investment banking and consulting. Maybe there's a niche to be exploited there. But its been two years since I chose university, so there might already be something like that on the market right now. I am also aware of a online learning/collaboration platform for students/academia, but havent looked into it that much (iversity.org).

 

[theag]

Oh, one issue with the platform for choosing your university might be that students in the DACH area generally stay close to home (with a few exceptions like me, moved 700km to attend the best possible university)

 

[CryptO]

Seems your are putting a limit on your business from the start by targeting universities.

Surely you would be better trying to think of something new and targeting everybody, IN THE WORLD.

I am 2 weeks away from starting a social question network. 'A Social Questwork'.

 

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[johnp]

Generally speaking, social media surely is very saturated, which doesn't mean that there are no opportunities, but in my opinion a platform for sharing thoughts about your university isn't one of them.

Interesting observation...have you ever polled university students on this? I have visited multiple universities about this very subject and my research shows the complete opposite. Maybe things are different in your country though. Over in the US people are very open to using social media with education and there are HUGE opportunities in this field. I however, would think that the same opportunities would exist in other countries as well.

 

[Mike39]

What is with everyone's desire to make a social media platform, I thought about the same thing for a while. I'm not saying someone can't do it but the odds against you are a ton higher than in really any other business I can think of. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and all the others I think eventually people will get tired of having to check 20 different sites.

Gold Nugget: You want to make bank, make a platform that includes a news feed from Twitter, Facebook, and all the other sites and puts them onto one page. A little marketing pixy dust and you'll be getting users faster than someone can count. Take about.me and instead of having links to all the pages, make the pages come to your site. The next Mark Zuckerberg.....

I get credit and 10% equity in anyone who does this haha :eusa_clap: :hl: :coffee:

 

[theag]

Interesting observation...have you ever polled university students on this? I have visited multiple universities about this very subject and my research shows the complete opposite. Maybe things are different in your country though. Over in the US people are very open to using social media with education and there are HUGE opportunities in this field. I however, would think that the same opportunities would exist in other countries as well.

well, what do you want to discuss on such a new platform? at my university we have forums, chat etc in the online learning environment. people there help each other out or ask questions to the tutors. other stuff is done in facebook groups. important stuff goes viral between the students anyway, like our issue at the moment, state government wants to raise the tuition fees again for the second time in one year, even double them again for international students like me.. crap. people organized sucessful flashmobs etc on fb.

So I dont really see the need for another discussion platform, but of course youre free to prove me wrong

 

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[theag]

What is with everyone's desire to make a social media platform

this bubble will soon burst..

Facebook Shares Slide Nearly 12% To $33.76 On Second Trading Day After IPO | TechCrunch

 

[theag]

I am 2 weeks away from starting a social question network

Whats the difference between your idea and Quora ?

 

[johnp]

Gold Nugget: You want to make bank, make a platform that includes a news feed from Twitter, Facebook, and all the other sites and puts them onto one page. A little marketing pixy dust and you'll be getting users faster than someone can count. Take about.me and instead of having links to all the pages, make the pages come to your site. The next Mark Zuckerberg.....

haha I think someone already thought of this. I think that mylife.com does this? not sure if it is that site, but I have seen it somewhere.

I heard that about.me sold for millions pre-revenue (not sure what the user base looked like though).

What is with everyone's desire to make a social media platform

A couple of weeks ago I was out and some guy walks up to me while I am standing in line for the bathroom and he asked so "what do you do in life"? Instead of telling him my boring day job as an IT consultant with the state, I decided to say - I'm building a social network (I like to see people's reactions to that statement). And like most people he responded "hasn't that been done before"? And that is exactly why I, and so many others are doing it. It's a proven model (at least short term). I personally don't want to be the person who spends my whole life trying to build most innovative product out there (like popcorn that flys out of the ball into your mouth). There is nothing wrong with reinventing the wheel, so long as some twists are added. A business can thrive off of good customer service, fast turn around time, a strong community, etc..all of which can be applied to a social media platform (except for maybe fast turnaround/production time).

I think that the people who desire to create social networks fall into 3 camps.

1. I am going to create a social network. - They reinvent the wheel but add nothing to it. (i.e.) Google+ or Microsoft's new social network. Why would I change the wheel on my car for the same exact wheel? Waste of time.

2. I am going to create a social network that flips the world upside down or I will go the opposite way and create a social network for my niche of collecting rocks...or wait..I will just create a social network so I can get rich. -- This person is the person who never succeeds because they either try to create something that is not possible to create, they are too focused on money, or their niche is too small.

3. I'm going to reinvent the wheel but I am going to add my own twists. -- This is where myspace, Facebook, & Linkedin come into play. They all came during a time when people were already using social networks. They used a proven model, but twisted the model just a little in some way to attract a user base. Even Apple did this when they entered the MP3 Player industry with the Ipod. They did not invent the MP3 player. They took existing technology and reinvented it with twists.

So I personally am shooting for #3. My twist is that I am focusing on creating an application that has a productive focus for people. This means conversations that can go deeper (online forum style) and enhanced discovery tools to make finding the right people for the right things much easier.

 

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[johnp]

well, what do you want to discuss on such a new platform? at my university we have forums, chat etc in the online learning environment.

Just for reference, what is the name of the online learning environment? I like keeping up-to-date on this stuff.

So I dont really see the need for another discussion platform, but of course youre free to prove me wrong

Maybe we are talking about two different things. I'm not talking about a total discussion platform..that is only a component of a social network. A strong social network should be part social discovery and part discussion based. The social discovery is extremely important because it can allow you to find the right information extremely fast. You want to be able to find a person on your campus who might have the same interests as you (especially as a new student). This is extremely important if we consider it in the context of Alexandar's notion of student engagement theory. We can even take this a step further. If I am a student in America and I am writing a Geopolitics paper on America from the view of a person in Europe, then I may want to DISCOVER the right person to contact to interview for my paper. I may want to ask this person to join my class group to provide a whole new view to the class that textbooks can't really provide. Now in the not-so perfect world that we live, not all students will use it like this. But it opens up new doors to social discovery - thus leading to engaging discussions.

Then diving deeper -- the framework. How does one set-up a platform so discovery on one's campus and throughout the entire higher edu. eco-system is extremely EASY? This is where streams, filters, and all of that good stuff comes into play. No student wants to spend long periods of time trying to organize people on campus.

..that is just how I view it..