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If You’re Thinking of Launching a Social Media Startup, Please Don’t

technori.com

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Re: If You’re Thinking of Launching a Social Media Startup, Please Don’t

#11

Post by DanBC »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #10

>>>>As I documented in the book, social media is a total loss leader for large corporations, too. They’re more or less there out of obligation I can back this up with some information. I currently work for a large corporation who has invested a ton of money into social media (facebook, twitter, instagram). Even after several years, there is a huge war being fought between "new media" types in our company and the "old…

You could probably make a company distinctive by not appearing on any social media platforms. Not having to kludge all those little [f] and [t] share icons onto every ad would probably make the creatives happy.

Re: If You’re Thinking of Launching a Social Media Startup, Please Don’t

#12

Post by NoPiece »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #10

>>>>As I documented in the book, social media is a total loss leader for large corporations, too. They’re more or less there out of obligation I can back this up with some information. I currently work for a large corporation who has invested a ton of money into social media (facebook, twitter, instagram). Even after several years, there is a huge war being fought between "new media" types in our company and the "old…

I think if you were selling widgets online (I assume you aren't), then the story would be much different. You can't know what behavior your customer took after seeing a print ad, but I know exactly how much traffic I get from our Facebook page, and how much of that converts for us.

Unfortunately since FB has started charging to promote posts, we get almost nothing from them, even though our likes grow, so we are all but abandoning FB. But that is a problem with Facebook's model, not social media inherently.

Re: If You’re Thinking of Launching a Social Media Startup, Please Don’t

#13

Post by wissler »

So this guy thinks he knows the full range of ideas, and that it's not possible that someone has thought of something he hasn't, that might just be good enough to warrant investment.

"I must confess that a man is guilty of unpardonable arrogance who concludes, because an argument has escaped his own investigation, that therefore it does not really exist."--David Hume

Re: If You’re Thinking of Launching a Social Media Startup, Please Don’t

#14

Post by jbenz »

garry wrote: post #4

The reason why social media is valuable as an ad platform is because it actually is more measurable and more effective than straight-up Proctor & Gamble-style brand advertising that you see in magazines and on TV every single day. It's not for everyone, and yes, some people don't get an ROI on what they do. But that's not social media's fault -- that is the advertiser's. My wife works in online marketing for women's…

I sure would love to see examples of some of her more successful Bebe or Modcloth facebook / twitter / social ads. Or hear about how many iterations it took them to to get to a successful system.

Re: If You’re Thinking of Launching a Social Media Startup, Please Don’t

#15

Post by damoncali »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #10

>>>>As I documented in the book, social media is a total loss leader for large corporations, too. They’re more or less there out of obligation I can back this up with some information. I currently work for a large corporation who has invested a ton of money into social media (facebook, twitter, instagram). Even after several years, there is a huge war being fought between "new media" types in our company and the "old…

Our CTO routinely joins our meetings and basically says, "Great, we had 5,000 likes on our Facbeook page, how many more widgets does that sell?"

That is incredibly sophisticated thinking for a large co. In my experience, it goes more like this.

1. PR guys pay a blogger with no traffic to write a post.

2. Blogger writes article and gets paid handsomely (The PR guys don't know he has no traffic since they didn't want to offend him by asking).

3. PR guys flog interns to generate chatter via social media.

4. Interns tweet amongst themselves.

5. PR guys get some mathematically incorrect and dubious metrics for some ill defined thing like "social media reach" and declare that said blog post generated 190 million impressions, which is equivalent to (just because) $5 million dollars of media.

6. PR guys claim victory and celebrate. Their superiors wonder what the hell the PR guys actually do for a living and get back to their infighting over budgets and why the sales guys aren't getting more product out.

Total cost to big co? Hard to tell, but I'd guess somewhere around $20k when you add up all the salaries involved and the huge fees the agencies charge.

But the bottom line is that even the most wasteful social media is peanuts at BigCo. It simply does not matter.

[Note: this is not a made up story. The numbers are slightly off because I can't remember them, but that's about it]

Re: If You’re Thinking of Launching a Social Media Startup, Please Don’t

#16

Post by tarr11 »

NoPiece wrote: post #12
at-fates-hands wrote: post #10

>>>>As I documented in the book, social media is a total loss leader for large corporations, too. They’re more or less there out of obligation I can back this up with some information. I currently work for a large corporation who has invested a ton of money into social media (facebook, twitter, instagram). Even after several years, there is a huge war being fought between "new media" types in our company and the "old…

I think if you were selling widgets online (I assume you aren't), then the story would be much different. You can't know what behavior your customer took after seeing a print ad, but I know exactly how much traffic I get from our Facebook page, and how much of that converts for us. Unfortunately since FB has started charging to promote posts, we get almost nothing from them, even though our likes grow, so we are all…

Why is this a problem with Facebook's model? It just sounds like you were priced out of Facebook network.

Re: If You’re Thinking of Launching a Social Media Startup, Please Don’t

#17

Post by arbuge »

"Social media startup" is a very broad term. More specific examples of what wouldn't work (in the author's opinion) might have been more useful.

Any blog/ecommerce site with social sharing buttons on it is a form of social media startup, for example.

Re: If You’re Thinking of Launching a Social Media Startup, Please Don’t

#18

Post by rayiner »

martinced wrote: post #6

I agree that the space is crowded. And there are other issues raising the barrier to entry: user fatigue and national/supra-national legislation (like the EU anti-cookie thing etc.) which may dampen your enthusiasm in case you thought about creating yet another social thinggy. Even on the almighty social network I can not just feel (that I could since a long time) but also see people complaining. No latter than today…

Wait till the current internet generation hits their 30's and gets real jobs they're afraid to lose. All the opinionated Facebook chattering my friends did in college has all but dried up now, and has been replaced with fake names and low profiles during recruiting season.

In this job market, and with idiotic new features like graph search, having a Facebook presence is a liability for all but the most whitewashed profiles.

Re: If You’re Thinking of Launching a Social Media Startup, Please Don’t

#20

Post by ThomPete »

In order to understand how misguided advice this is, lets do the following:

If You’re Thinking of Launching a _____________, Please Don’t

Now instead of "Social Media Startup" write an actual business idea.

Nobody starts a "Social Media Startup". People start companies that might involve social media to more or lesser extent or might have network effect, organic growht and so on. But starting a social media startup is not what people do.

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