Or alternate title: “Yeah, Right!” and “Oh, Brother,” as one of my daughters would have said when she was in her early teens. She would have been rolling her eyes, too.
I got an e-mail the other day with the title “Imagine Facebook for Business.”
Pretty good subject line for an unsolicited e-mail. Got my attention. But I was already thinking “OK, that’s easy enough to imagine. We call it Linkedin.” Not what the e-mailer wanted me to think.
I visited the site in question…
[Tangent, off topic: I'm not going to give the URL, because this post without the URL can be edgy and fun but, with the URL, it would be mean. I don't know the guy. And although unsolicited e-mail annoys me, as this blog gets more attention, I get more of it; and what the heck, I don't wish him ill or anything. I put myself out there by blogging, so no harm, no foul--but no URL, either.]
… and the truth was more like imagining Craig’s List without the listings. Some photo services, some remodelers; a total, if I read it correctly, of 61 random businesses in several dozen different places. I searched for “editor” in ZIP code 97401 (Eugene, Oregon) and came up, of course, with 0 results, followed by ads for 20 random businesses in 20 random places. Dance lessons in New York, poop scooping in New Jersey (an interesting variation on editing my stuff, I admit, but a bit harsh), computer consulting in Oklahoma, bookkeeping in North Carolina, photography in Texas, and so on.
So why am I posting on this, in this blog? Three reasons:
- Understand the upside and downside of the critical mass phenomenon. Sites like this work if–and only if–they have critical mass. Lots of big successes, including Facebook, Craigslist, Youtube, Netflix, Amazon and so many others, got on the right side of critical mass and managed to stay there. You and I can’t get there just by inventing some database function. You have to be original, or capitalized with tens of millions–and smart or lucky, or something else.
- Exaggeration can make you look foolish. Don’t be the Facebook of this, the Youtube of that or the Netflix of something else unless you really have something strong to show.
- What you really need, as a small startup, is focus. Let your dreams be as grand as you like, but focus your business down to a very sharp edge. For example, maybe this unnamed new site could have made it with focus on a specific type of business in a specific location. All the businesses it could gather in some small town, all the pooper scooper businesses nationwide or something like that. Find the long tail. Join it.
So this is a bit of a rant. Sorry.
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It seems inevitable that as more people take sites like Facebook beyond the “social” realm and into the business and professional networking realm, other sites will crop up, trying to get a piece of the market. I’m all for competition (not even Facebook or LinkedIn is perfect for everyone, not unlike a lot of business solutions and – as someone that works with small business IT consultants, IT solutions – that I can think of), but I agree that it’s pointless to roll out other sites that are clearly not developed or capable of coming close to fulfilling needs. Hopefully we’ll see some actually viable sites. And you’re right – a focused plan is absolutely necessary for any idea to really take shape and for goals to be possible, and certainly for any type of business endeavor to succeed.