To all SNS developers

Just wondering, but have you ever heard of a long term plan for the progression/advertising of your Social Network, and how you can improve it with future technologies over time?

In other words, have you ever heard of a Business Plan or a Marketing Plan?

I see so many SNS' lately that I'm just wondering whether any of you have actually thought about it before coding up a lush website, with no spine to connect the legs which get you places, to the brain which does the thinking. The results I think, will be interesting.

Closed by Invent (Forum Moderator): Thread closed due to going off-topic and to prevent further arguments.

Really really weird thread. Its up to the creator if they feel they want a marketing plan, but I know a few people that do have SNS's in the works and do have marketing plans, funding and alot of resources (and before Greg flatters himself, its not youmeo).

But I do see what your coming from, most people coding SNS's arent business 'Savvy' enough to get anywhere with their SNS, which is sad in most cases because they have a really nice script.

However if I do projects I always have business plans with marketing plans, shedules the lot. Well I always try to :P

Ah thats good to hear. Thats the point I'm making though, most of the people coding SNS' know nearly nothing about Business, they wouldn't even know where to start with a Business/Marketing plan. To be honest, a Business plan for a SNS wouldn't be filled with many points, but I think it'd be more like planning ahead and looking at future technologies which could be possible if targets are met.

It's how all the big businesses do it really... Marketing Plan is sort of the same, I'm not sure if it'd be wise to put one in for a SNS come to think of it. This forum definetly needs some experienced businessmen, since it's booming with ambition but no-one will take it.

Point of the thread was to find out who knew what a Business Plan actually was, and why it's so important to an SNS and the success of the business itself. If they're not planning ahead, they should just cut their losses!

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Originally Posted by Pyroka

Just wondering, but have you ever heard of a long term plan for the progression/advertising of your Social Network, and how you can improve it with future technologies over time?

In other words, have you ever heard of a Business Plan or a Marketing Plan?

I see so many SNS' lately that I'm just wondering whether any of you have actually thought about it before coding up a lush website, with no spine to connect the legs which get you places, to the brain which does the thinking. The results I think, will be interesting.

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I've been working on my M.O.S.N (Music oriented social network) since around Christmas and we haven't even really began development yet as we're still working on our business plan. I'm not sure about the other users making a SN though as they seem to be saying their making one and looking to open it by the end of the month.

In fact, my M.O.S.N's business plan is only about a dozen pages or so outlining what we're aiming for with the site, financial information, etc and we've still got a lot to document.

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Originally Posted by Invent

I've been working on my M.O.S.N (Music oriented social network) since around Christmas and we haven't even really began development yet as we're still working on our business plan. I'm not sure about the other users making a SN though as they seem to be saying their making one and looking to open it by the end of the month.

In fact, my M.O.S.N's business plan is only about a dozen pages or so outlining what we're aiming for, etc and we've still got a lot to document.

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Would that be FLUX, or something else in the works? Seems like you've got something new everyday Si, lol. It just seems like everyone makes a social network and think its just as easy as that, and the word of mouth will simply do the rest. It never does though, you need to put a bit of thought into advertising to get the desired results.

Good luck with your business plan, sounds like you've got alot to write up. :P

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Would that be FLUX, or something else in the works? Seems like you've got something new everyday Si, lol. It just seems like everyone makes a social network and think its just as easy as that, and the word of mouth will simply do the rest. It never does though, you need to put a bit of thought into advertising to get the desired results.

Good luck with your business plan, sounds like you've got alot to write up.

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It was called FLUX but we've had to change it to INFLUX as there are already a lot of things called FLUX related to music :(. The great thing about this project is that a lot of my friends are really interested in it and are helping out, so atm I only have to think of ideas and then eventually design & code them :P

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It just seems like everyone makes a social network and think its just as easy as that, and the word of mouth will simply do the rest. It never does though, you need to put a bit of thought into advertising to get the desired results.

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I agree with that. This forum seems to take out a new fad every couple of months; for the last few months it's been social networks and who can make one the fastest. I think the new fad is going to be uploaders sadly.

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Originally Posted by Invent

It was called FLUX but we've had to change it to INFLUX as there are already a lot of things called FLUX related to music :(. The great thing about this project is that a lot of my friends are really interested in it and are helping out, so atm I only have to think of ideas and then eventually design & code them :P

I agree with that. This forum seems to take out a new fad every couple of months; for the last few months it's been social networks and who can make one the fastest. I think the new fad is going to be uploaders sadly.

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I guess the name FLUX was copyrighted by MTV FLUX, which is also a (sort of) M.O.S.N? I think its better to think of ideas first because then you can brainstorm current ideas, and then improve on those ideas as the days go by till you think, "Right, this is what I want for this" and then you can simply move onto the next matter. I find it also helps you plan ahead.

The new fad will definetly be uploaders, I've noticed that alot since I decided to come back to the forum. Gone for 2 weeks and there's like tons of uploaders around, hehe. First it was DJ Panels, then Housekeeping Panels, then Social Networks, and now Uploaders? God help us lol. It's a shame no-one actually collabs together and builds a formidable uploader, since 5 uploaders aren't as good as making one big one!

Shame the web dev's on HabboxForum are so obsessed with their own ego and reputation, that if they were put in a team there would be a fight for leadership and a ton of moaning/whining/******** involved. Anyway, just keep at what you're doing dude, I think you've got something. :P

Business is vital to social networks as they will get no where without it. Loads of people have ignored this fact, even ones I have worked with.

The best example is VIRB which has one of the best designs and best systems yet fails to actually produce a large income and has very little popularity. If they were to market it correctly it would quickly become the next best thing however that doesn't look likely since PureVolume makes them more in the short term.

Youmeo has a much better business plan than website at the moment that's why they've been working hard on building up a team for web development. On the business side of things Youmeo is rocketing but the actual website still has far to go. So we're like the opposite to VIRB however I'm spending 8 - 9 hours everyday just renivating pages and designs to make them perfect.

I love it how you can't do anything but bring in youmeo's plans over and over again. Is it THAT hard to answer a question without mentioning that god-annoying site now, it's just not needed to answer the guys question - so what if you have a business plan, the business plan means jack all when the site is in a very poor condition as many people would agree with me on that point.

At least he didnt go into resources, otherwise we would have to call an ambulance to get his head out of a place where the sun don't shine.

Me been a **** aside, I still don't think its that hard to run an SNS or 'community' based website compared to other types of internet business which are directly based upon sales. I still do agree that most SNS' don't have business plans, or know what they have todo to get a site running to a good standard.

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Originally Posted by Pyroka

Shame the web dev's on HabboxForum are so obsessed with their own ego and reputation, that if they were put in a team there would be a fight for leadership and a ton of moaning/whining/******** involved.

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That's absolutely spot on.

Just a quick input, marketing plans are included in business plans ;)

Trust Greg to bring YMO up again.

Always can rely on you!

Business plans aren't a fundamental input to a business. I've heard of plenty of businesses that haven't created a business plan and are successful. Peter Jones once announced business plans as a 'waste of time' and that planning on the spot leads you to better success than planning the business years before it starts.

And Greg, **** off. Nobody here wants to hear another word of YouMeo as it's one of the worst social networks out there and under crap management.

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Originally Posted by Klydo

Business is vital to social networks as they will get no where without it. Loads of people have ignored this fact, even ones I have worked with.

The best example is VIRB which has one of the best designs and best systems yet fails to actually produce a large income and has very little popularity. If they were to market it correctly it would quickly become the next best thing however that doesn't look likely since PureVolume makes them more in the short term.

Youmeo has a much better business plan than website at the moment that's why they've been working hard on building up a team for web development. On the business side of things Youmeo is rocketing but the actual website still has far to go. So we're like the opposite to VIRB however I'm spending 8 - 9 hours everyday just renivating pages and designs to make them perfect.

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It is very vital towards an SNS, spot on. I think your description of VIRB could describe many other issues which SNS' on here have, they just don't have the business knowledge to do it. I'm not going to criticise your choice of SNS' you've chosen to show that example because frankly, it's a great example. Who knows, maybe in a year or so Youmeo will have hit the big time & everyone will know why: Because they had a business plan!

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Originally Posted by GasFMatt

I love it how you can't do anything but bring in youmeo's plans over and over again. Is it THAT hard to answer a question without mentioning that god-annoying site now, it's just not needed to answer the guys question - so what if you have a business plan, the business plan means jack all when the site is in a very poor condition as many people would agree with me on that point.

At least he didnt go into resources, otherwise we would have to call an ambulance to get his head out of a place where the sun don't shine.

Me been a **** aside, I still don't think its that hard to run an SNS or 'community' based website compared to other types of internet business which are directly based upon sales. I still do agree that most SNS' don't have business plans, or know what they have todo to get a site running to a good standard.

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I don't necessarily agree with you on how a bad SNS can't have a Business Plan. If the owner acknowledges that the design is bad, they can employ designers to make it better can they not? Then they can start thinking about features & not what, you've just gotta have the right mindset otherwise there really is no point and you're just wasting your time.

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Originally Posted by kk.

Just a quick input, marketing plans are included in business plans ;)

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I admit I was a bit uncertain on Marketing plans, cheers for pointing it out.

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Originally Posted by NEW-START

Business plans aren't a fundamental input to a business. I've heard of plenty of businesses that haven't created a business plan and are successful. Peter Jones once announced business plans as a 'waste of time' and that planning on the spot leads you to better success than planning the business years before it starts.

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Seriously? I'm pretty surprised by that. I guess everyone has their own approach to it, but to be safe a business plan does help significantly. I see where this Peter Jones guy is coming from though; Jump straight into the market and get a headstart & then plan the rest as you go along. I guess there's risks to that, but there's also risks to a business plan.

ANYWAY, this goes for uploaders, housekeping tools, DJ Panels and whatever else you can think of. If you want it to be successful, you must first create a generic design (for DJ/HK panels) so that the client can think, "Ooo that looks nice, we can change this that this that" and then your final product is there. You can't do that though, without a damn business plan! How the hell will they hear about the product? You think they'll just type in DJ Panels and the first result for google will be "[Your Panel name here]"? No, doesn't work like that.

I do wish you would all stop arguing & ******** about past issues like the whole hosting argument (which I lost track of completely) because you lot could work proper good as a team... =/

To me business / market plans aren't key. Advertising is key.. If you don't have any advertisements, you don't have users. Take a look at facebook, microsoft have a share in facebook so facebook will easily have advertisements.

People who plan on making an SN need to plan out what sites they will advertise on, how much this will cost in total, how many users they're looking to address, what ages. All these points are fundamental in my opinion. Just like Invent, he has done well, he has outlined that his SN is a Music Orientated SN already. He is looking to attract bands, music lovers.

Klydo; I really don't think you should bring YouMeo back here as it's hardly setting any kind of SOLID example. Dentafrice pointed out, poor security, easy to exploit. It also seems that all you do is have a laugh and no work? The first day I visited YouMeo I was able to see all the links that I should only see once registered. You should have never opened until the site is fully ready. All I see with YouMeo at the moment is a decent design which I think you're being used for..

On the topic of uploaders; These are getting to be a big thing with nobody being able to code one and using free ones. It's kinda' annoying to the fact that everybody will be relying on one uploader that 5 other sites are using.

The first sentence put me of reading the rest of your post excellent. What do you think marketing is? Its how your going to generate users.

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Originally Posted by kk.

The first sentence put me of reading the rest of your post excellent. What do you think marketing is? Its how your going to generate users.

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What I meant was you don't need 40 lines of marketing garbage to grab some Ad space.

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Originally Posted by Excellent

What I meant was you don't need 40 lines of marketing garbage to grab some Ad space.

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Business plan is how to get income, what will it provide etc.
Not, just for adspace.

And what was it you said? "I know more about business than most on HabboxForum"

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Originally Posted by Excellent

Klydo; I really don't think you should bring YouMeo back here as it's hardly setting any kind of SOLID example. Dentafrice pointed out, poor security, easy to exploit. It also seems that all you do is have a laugh and no work? The first day I visited YouMeo I was able to see all the links that I should only see once registered. You should have never opened until the site is fully ready. All I see with YouMeo at the moment is a decent design which I think you're being used for..

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Thank you so much for saying that, as much as I tell him and Calum B on MSN they should close it down until it's finish, they remain a strong standing of how it should stay open. +rep for saying that.

Dentafrice was absolutly correct, me and him found ways to change password, status' etc.. for other people's accounts because fields were not properly filtered (mysql_real_escape_string, stripslashes etc....) which is really worrying when there are 400,000 users worth of information in there. And if you goto change your password, you can see your old password is in the fields as a value... so if you go into view source your password is clearly visable. Thus meaning password's are not md5'd and a huge amount of trust is needed to use the site.

Back to marketing, I think it is key. There is no point having advertisements on your site unless your are advertising on others to bring you a nice solid and active userbase. Of course the quality of the site helps on people signing up, as they may want to use some of the awesome features that are available.

edit // I await for klydo's defensive reply.

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Originally Posted by GasFMatt

Thank you so much for saying that, as much as I tell him and Calum B on MSN they should close it down until it's finish, they remain a strong standing of how it should stay open. +rep for saying that.

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As we can't close the site, I've said to Calum that the site shouldn't have opened however it's not like the sites you get on here. It has to meet press launches and follow the business plan as it's not a "project" it's a business. Therefore we can't keep the site offline otherwise we wouldn't be able to secure investment and gain press interest.

In an ideal world we'd be able to run BETA and have the site offline for improvements however it's just not possible. Calum actually said he would love to have the time to run a BETA of the site before we open it but we just don't. So it's not us trying to annoy everyone and purposely cause issues with the system it's just how things have to be for now until we have a full team of staff in place.

Thanks for replying in a dignified way. I am glad you have sense and agree it shouldn't be open at the current time.

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Originally Posted by GasFMatt

Thanks for replying in a dignified way. I am glad you have sense and agree it shouldn't be open at the current time.

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Everyone who runs the site knows it shouldn't be open as it's not finished and it's needs a lot of ironing. However if we turned to the investors and said "We're closing it down for a couple of weeks to fix everything." what do you think their response would be? It definitely wouldn't be one I'd like to hear...

Thats fair enough. I'm just under the personal impression that it should of remained pplparty whilst you developed youmeo - then you would of had a nice launch with a polished website.

Toobad the world doesnt go the way people want it. Although some of the bugs are key when coding it the first time round, like filtering inputs (you and I both know that, surely).

It changed from PplParty to Youmeo in April, that had nothing to do with this launch. This launch was just an overhaul of the site.

Greg just **** off. Youmeo is a piece of ****, as are you.
Just leave this damned forum.

Edited by Invent (Forum Moderator): Please don't be rude.

I was saying they should of designed the new site before they switch from pplparty to youmeo....

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Originally Posted by GasFMatt

I was saying they should of designed the new site before they switch from pplparty to youmeo....

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Suppose but I don't think they knew about me until late May or early June. So a redesigning wasn't in their plans.

Seems like a big overlook from my point of view (not finding a designer to redo it). But whats happened has happened so just make the most of what you can do in the coming months. Basically make it not bad :)

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Originally Posted by GasFMatt

Seems like a big overlook from my point of view (not finding a designer to redo it). But whats happened has happened so just make the most of what you can do in the coming months. Basically make it not bad :)

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The site isn't bad, if it was a bad site it wouldn't have 400,000+ members registered. No one here has yet to come even close to that figure yet you cast judgement.

I am still revising my business plan with my other staff, but at the moment we're mainly focussed on the coding part, as we'll have a lot more time to revise the plans once we've constructed our system (Again).

Edit: So greg, that doesn't mean you have them all active, actually you don't have many at all to what I've heard. Nivade usually has at least 30 - 80 active users (daily) when it's live.

Leave it, he blocked me on msn because I we were argueing on how its not hard to fix a few sql injection holes...

He also mentioned sueing me because I found exploits within their site, of which I notified the owner about... 3 weeks ago. Yet most still remain.

Anyway, Good to hear that independant. Good luck.

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Originally Posted by Plux

Greg just **** off. Youmeo is a piece of ****, as are you.
Just leave this damned forum.

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Why don't you shut the hell up you little kid and pull your tongue out of scotts ****.

Klydo; This is clear to me that you should get some new investors if they are going to get angry because you want to improve the site. I am very sure if you was to close the site down for maybe a week or two, get everything fixed, shine it, fix the errors; YouMeo will be decent. Hell, I'm sure YouMeo has seperate domains, why not transfer everything on the server over to there (clone it) and in between time fix it up? This could work surely??

Back on topic, I wasn't saying marketing plans are not key but you do not need 400 pages of text outlining what you're going to do.

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Originally Posted by Excellent

Why don't you shut the hell up you little kid and pull your tongue out of scotts ****.

Klydo; This is clear to me that you should get some new investors if they are going to get angry because you want to improve the site. I am very sure if you was to close the site down for maybe a week or two, get everything fixed, shine it, fix the errors; YouMeo will be decent. Hell, I'm sure YouMeo has seperate domains, why not transfer everything on the server over to there (clone it) and in between time fix it up? This could work surely??

Back on topic, I wasn't saying marketing plans are not key but you do not need 400 pages of text outlining what you're going to do.

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Lmao, Ok.
Go back to your "amazing design and programming skills" and pretending to be an all-out business pro. :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Plux

Lmao, Ok.
Go back to your "amazing design and programming skills" and pretending to be an all-out business pro. :rolleyes:

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They're not amazing but I can quite rightfully say are 100x better than yours. Also an "all-out business pro"? Excuse me for saying this but the only thing you know about business is asking me to create you a CMS for free.

who said business plans had to be 400 pages lol? Outlining what your going to do, target market, competition, ways of generating income, expenditure, advertising etc can be done with relative ease on a few pages. Once your up and running and growing you can extend on it and change it to better suit your needs. but still, small(ish) companies and even large ones do not have 400 pages? please dont say youmeo had 400?

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Originally Posted by kk.

who said business plans had to be 400 pages lol? Outlining what your going to do, target market, competition, ways of generating income, expenditure, advertising etc can be done with relative ease on a few pages. Once your up and running and growing you can extend on it and change it to better suit your needs. but still, small(ish) companies and even large ones do not have 400 pages? please dont say youmeo had 400?

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Okay I over-exaggerated 400 but still.. You will need a document, maybe a checklist with what you're setting out to achieve, the target audience, figures and dates.

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Originally Posted by Excellent

They're not amazing but I can quite rightfully say are 100x better than yours. Also an "all-out business pro"? Excuse me for saying this but the only thing you know about business is asking me to create you a CMS for free.

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:rolleyes: Yes, no-one else can design, but you and Greg so it seems.
You even commented that you ditched iGO because me and Josh couldn't design yet, you kissed my *** so much, because I stopped people trolling your thread, and I said "I'd help your project"

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Originally Posted by Plux

:rolleyes: Yes, no-one else can design, but you and Greg so it seems.
You even commented that you ditched iGO because me and Josh couldn't design yet, you kissed my *** so much, because I stopped people trolling your thread, and I said "I'd help your project"

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There are a lot of good designers on here already, they know whom they are so I don't need to repeat their names but you're not one of them. I ditched iGO due to me knowing how inexperienced I was.. and you. Josh was great but he wanted to continue his own projects because he had the talent. I did not ask you for anything, you rudely wanted to be involved as per usual. I can see you're on your last legs right now joshy boy, best thing is to shut up shop and learn how to design + code, instead of me teaching you how to code a simple 3 div offline page and you get it wrong.

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Originally Posted by Excellent

There are a lot of good designers on here already, they know whom they are so I don't need to repeat their names but you're not one of them. I ditched iGO due to me knowing how inexperienced I was.. and you. Josh was great but he wanted to continue his own projects because he had the talent. I did not ask you for anything, you rudely wanted to be involved as per usual. I can see you're on your last legs right now joshy boy, best thing is to shut up shop and learn how to design + code, instead of me teaching you how to code a simple 3 div offline page and you get it wrong.

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Lmao, you've never tried to teach me how to code, never have rofl.
I asked for simple snippets of code, ;)

And, I can design a lot better than you dear.
So shut the **** up.

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Originally Posted by Plux

Lmao, you've never tried to teach me how to code, never have rofl.
I asked for simple snippets of code, ;)

And, I can design a lot better than you dear.
So shut the **** up.

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Yes you have, that silly 3 divmaintenance page for metidesigns which you failed at.

Oh and you can design can you?

Show Hide

http://i307.photobucket.com/albums/n...g?t=1215804110

hmm..

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Originally Posted by Excellent

Yes you have, that silly 3 divmaintenance page for metidesigns which you failed at.

Oh and you can design can you?

Show Hide

http://i307.photobucket.com/albums/n...g?t=1215804110

hmm..

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Lmao, a 2 minute fireworks job?
Wow, you single out one piece.