Considerations for new niche social networks

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style="font-size: 24.925373134328px;" aria-label="planning (12 items)">planning</a>, <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/publishing/" class="tag-cloud-link tag-link-179 tag-link-position-42" style="font-size: 22.537313432836px;" aria-label="publishing (8 items)">publishing</a>, <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/smartphone/" class="tag-cloud-link tag-link-114 tag-link-position-43" style="font-size: 21.044776119403px;" aria-label="smartphone (6 items)">smartphone</a>, <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/social-media-2/" class="tag-cloud-link tag-link-51 tag-link-position-44" style="font-size: 26.716417910448px;" aria-label="social media (16 items)">social media</a>, <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/study/" class="tag-cloud-link tag-link-133 tag-link-position-45" style="font-size: 21.791044776119px;" aria-label="study (7 items)">study</a>, <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/twitter/" class="tag-cloud-link tag-link-164 tag-link-position-46" style="font-size: 22.537313432836px;" aria-label="Twitter (8 items)">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/user-interface/" class="tag-cloud-link tag-link-20 tag-link-position-47" style="font-size: 28.358208955224px;" aria-label="user interface (21 items)">user interface</a>, <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/video/" class="tag-cloud-link tag-link-118 tag-link-position-48" style="font-size: 21.791044776119px;" aria-label="video (7 items)">video</a>, <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/visitors/" class="tag-cloud-link tag-link-97 tag-link-position-49" style="font-size: 25.522388059701px;" aria-label="visitors (13 items)">visitors</a>, <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/visualization/" class="tag-cloud-link tag-link-199 tag-link-position-50" style="font-size: 21.044776119403px;" aria-label="visualization (6 items)">visualization</a> </div> </div> <div class="js-ajax-frame"> <section class="post-list"> <h3>Recent posts</h3> <article class="post"> <div class="article-footer"> <time datetime="2014">5 Mar 2014</time> <h4><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2014/03/05/gender-role-literacy-girls-in-science/">Gender role literacy: Girls in science?</a></h4> </div> <p>There are gender wars, and then there are casualties. It wasn’t until 2011 that the behemoth toymaker LEGO acknowledged girls’ desire to build with bricks, even though the company had long before made a seemingly effortless pivot to co-branding, video games, and major motion pictures. So it’s little wonder that girls face all-too-real obstacles when <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2014/03/05/gender-role-literacy-girls-in-science/">[…]</a></p> <a class="more" href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2014/03/05/gender-role-literacy-girls-in-science/">Read more</a> </article> <article class="post"> <div class="article-footer"> <time datetime="2013">9 Dec 2013</time> <h4><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2013/12/09/challenges-of-crowdsourcing-analysis-of-historypin/">Challenges of crowdsourcing: Analysis of Historypin</a></h4> </div> <p>Crowdsourcing can build virtual community, engage the public, and build large knowledge databases about science and culture. But what does it take, and how fast can you grow? For some insight, we look at a crowdsourced history site: Historypin is an appealing database of historical photos, with dates, locations, captions, and other metadata. It’s called History <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2013/12/09/challenges-of-crowdsourcing-analysis-of-historypin/">[…]</a></p> <a class="more" href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2013/12/09/challenges-of-crowdsourcing-analysis-of-historypin/">Read more</a> </article> <article class="post"> <div class="article-footer"> <time datetime="2013">18 Nov 2013</time> <h4><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2013/11/18/dinovember-creative-literacy-starts-young/">Dinovember: Creative literacy starts young</a></h4> </div> <p>“Uh-oh,” Refe Tuma heard his girls whisper. “Mom and Dad are not going to like this.” It’s Dinovember, and his family’s plastic dinosaurs have been getting into mischief all month. Every year, Tuma and his wife devote the month of November to “convincing our children that, while they sleep, their plastic dinosaur figures come to life. Related <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2013/11/18/dinovember-creative-literacy-starts-young/">[…]</a></p> <a class="more" href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2013/11/18/dinovember-creative-literacy-starts-young/">Read more</a> </article> </section> </div> </div> </div> </div> </header> <main role="main" id="main"><div id="twocolumns"> <div class="container"> <h1>Considerations for new niche social networks</h1> <div class="twocolumns-holder"> <section id="content" class="about-holder img-posts"> <article class="post"> <p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-2764" title="Social network considerations" src="http://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Screen-shot-2011-07-20-at-10.51.02-AM.png" alt="" width="183" height="121" srcset="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Screen-shot-2011-07-20-at-10.51.02-AM.png 183w, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Screen-shot-2011-07-20-at-10.51.02-AM-150x99.png 150w" sizes="(max-width: 183px) 100vw, 183px" />Social networking gives professionals and enthusiastic members of the public a great way to connect and share information about scientific or cultural topics.</p> <p>A niche social network can benefit small, grassroots projects as well as large institutions, achieving many objectives simultaneously. A social network allows members to e.g., exchanging information, making personal connections, fostering dialog and awareness on a topic, as well as fundraising or promoting products and services.</p> <p>Here are some tips and considerations for getting started…<span id="more-2738"></span></p> <p><strong>Use existing sites.</strong></p> <p><strong></strong>Establish a presence on the main networks your audience is already using — e.g., via a Facebook page, Twitter account, LinkedIn group, other established online communities, and soon, Google+. These systems do a lot.</p> <p><strong>Start a blog. </strong></p> <p>If you have not already, start a blog. Your organization’s staff can write articles, or your can recruit independent bloggers and launch a blog network with between 3-20 independent bloggers. The world of blog networks is not yet saturated, and a common platform is great for both bloggers and the host organization. A blog provides a core of interesting content which helps anchor a social network.</p> <p><strong>Consider your objectives. </strong></p> <p><strong></strong>What are your goals? Educating the public, connecting professionals or enthusiasts, learning more about your constituents and their wants, fundraising or promoting products and services, driving membership, rallying support for a cause, providing online customer/member support, or simply keeping up with the Joneses? And, what’s the value of those outcomes in financial or intangible terms?</p> <p><strong><strong>Reality check.</strong></strong></p> <p><strong><strong></strong></strong>Launching a social network is expensive, and the benefits may not be financial. Market research firm Hypatia Research found in 2011 that only 25% of companies that launch social media have a positive return on their investment, and of those, the return was 0.5-2% ROI. (N>400 executives and employees at companies using customer-facing social media platforms.)</p> <p><strong>Plan features.</strong></p> <p>What kinds of features will your target community want? What features do you need that don’t exist in existing or inexpensive networks? See <a title="Niche social networks: Ravelry, ExhibitFiles, and others" href="http://www.idea.org/blog/2011/07/12/niche-social-networks-ravelry-exhibitfiles-and-others/">last week’s post about Ravelry and ExhibitFiles</a> for ideas on features. You might draft a succinct social network policy which will keep interactions positive, civil and legal, but not over-police.</p> <p>Most major platforms have virtually identical features, but they differ in their overall ease of use, and ease of launch.</p> <p><strong>Plan resources.</strong></p> <p><strong></strong>According to Bryan House, VP of marketing for <a href="http://acquia.com/products-services/acquia-drupal">Acquia</a> (a company which provides support and hosting for the Drupal system), most social networks require the following three roles:</p> <ul> <li><em>Community Manager</em> – This person nurtures and fosters participation. This includes routine tasks like removing spam, and subtle tasks that maintain a positive vibe in the community. If you have a blog network, the community manager recruits your bloggers, makes sure your bloggers are happy, encourages them, advocates for them within your organization, and promotes new posts on FB, Twitter, and other networks. At a minimum, this is 20% FTE, more if they write blog posts. — In the long term, this can be your biggest expense.</li> <li><em>Designer and CSS developer</em> – This is the person who creates the themes for your pages, has an eye for a sensible user interface, and creates the CSS templates which display your site. Some designers also do CSS, but more often this is a team of two people. Usually system adminstrators are poor designers. Typically, there’s a constant stream of needs for new CSS.</li> <li><em>Dev/Ops</em> – This is a new generation of system administrator. They are responsible for the code and infrastructure. This is a more technical role than a typical webmaster, but many wemasters may be able to do it. If you expect a lot of traffic, the person should understand multiple-server architectures and how to optimize and cache content. This role is not needed if you use a full-featured commercial service.</li> </ul> <p>This all gets costly in staff time, or outside consultants and companies. More complex sites also have extra developers work on the site.</p> <p>Also, hosting is a bigger deal with social networking, so expect to pay. The difference is that customized content takes more server resources than anonymous visitors. While a typical web server might be able to serve a million generic web pages a day, you might only get 1-10% of that volume for signed-in users who are looking at personalized profiles and streams.</p> <p><strong>Choose a platform. </strong></p> <p>There are hundreds of options for software. They range from hosted services, to free or commercial software which runs on your own servers. You will almost exclusively want a system hosted at a dedicated hosting facility (the cloud) because it’s more reliable than running on your local infrastructure.</p> <p>Each software platform has tradeoffs.</p> <p>Continue to the <a title="Software options for niche social networks" href="http://www.idea.org/blog/2011/07/20/software-options-for-niche-social-networks/">next post to look at software options</a>… >></p> <div class='yarpp-related'> <h3>Related posts:</h3><ol> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/07/20/software-options-for-niche-social-networks/" rel="bookmark" title="Software options for niche social networks">Software options for niche social networks </a> <small>So you want to create a niche social network? And you’ve read the prior post on overall issues...</small></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/04/05/science-outreach-from-the-military-armed-with-science/" rel="bookmark" title="Science outreach from the military: Armed with Science">Science outreach from the military: Armed with Science </a> <small>Drones, spy robots, Mach 6 warplanes, new energy sources, and climate monitoring are just a few of the...</small></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/03/31/mobile-product-development-principles-from-smithsonian/" rel="bookmark" title="Mobile product development principles – from Smithsonian">Mobile product development principles – from Smithsonian </a> <small>Today, Nancy Proctor, the head of mobile strategy and initiatives for the Smithsonian Institution, gave an online talk about...</small></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/07/12/niche-social-networks-ravelry-exhibitfiles-and-others/" rel="bookmark" title="Niche social networks: Ravelry, ExhibitFiles, and others">Niche social networks: Ravelry, ExhibitFiles, and others </a> <small>Thinking about launching a new niche social network for a science or cultural community of professionals? Think again....</small></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2013/12/09/challenges-of-crowdsourcing-analysis-of-historypin/" rel="bookmark" title="Challenges of crowdsourcing: Analysis of Historypin">Challenges of crowdsourcing: Analysis of Historypin </a> <small>Crowdsourcing can build virtual community, engage the public, and build large knowledge databases about science and culture. But...</small></li> </ol> </div> </article> <section class="section comments" id="comments"> <h3>One comment on <strong>Considerations for new niche social networks</strong></h3> <div class="commentlist"> <div class="commentlist-item"> <div class="pingback even thread-even depth-1" id="comment-816"> <div class="commentlist-holder"> <a href='http://www.idea.org/blog/2011/07/20/software-options-for-niche-social-networks/' rel='external nofollow' class='url'>IDEA » Software options for niche social networks</a> <p class="meta"><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/07/20/considerations-for-new-niche-social-networks/#comment-816">20 Jul 2011, 7:58 pm</a></p> <p>[…] you want to create a niche social network? And you’ve read the prior post on overall issues to consider? Here’s an overview of the main software platforms you will […]</p> <p><a rel='nofollow' class='comment-reply-link' href='https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/07/20/considerations-for-new-niche-social-networks/?replytocom=816#respond' onclick='return addComment.moveForm( "comment-816", "816", "respond", "2738" )' aria-label='Reply to IDEA » Software options for niche social networks'>Reply</a></p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </section> <section class="comment-respond"> <div id="respond" class="comment-respond"> <h3 id="reply-title" class="comment-reply-title">Leave a Reply <small><a rel="nofollow" id="cancel-comment-reply-link" href="/blog/2011/07/20/considerations-for-new-niche-social-networks/#respond" style="display:none;">Cancel reply</a></small></h3> <form action="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-comments-post.php" method="post" id="commentform" class="comment-form"> <p class="comment-notes"><span id="email-notes">Your email address will not be published.</span> Required fields are marked <span class="required">*</span></p><p class="comment-form-author"><label for="author">Name <span class="required">*</span></label> <input id="author" name="author" type="text" value="" size="30" maxlength="245" required='required' /></p> <p class="comment-form-email"><label for="email">Email <span class="required">*</span></label> <input id="email" name="email" type="text" value="" size="30" maxlength="100" aria-describedby="email-notes" required='required' /></p> <p class="comment-form-url"><label for="url">Website</label> <input id="url" name="url" type="text" value="" size="30" maxlength="200" /></p> <p class="comment-form-comment"><label for="comment">Comment</label> <textarea id="comment" name="comment" cols="45" rows="8" maxlength="65525" required="required"></textarea></p><p class="form-submit"><input name="submit" type="submit" id="submit" class="submit" value="Post Comment" /> <input type='hidden' name='comment_post_ID' value='2738' id='comment_post_ID' /> <input type='hidden' name='comment_parent' id='comment_parent' value='0' /> </p><p style="display: none;"><input type="hidden" id="akismet_comment_nonce" name="akismet_comment_nonce" value="d805deb1ec" /></p><p style="display: none;"><input type="hidden" id="ak_js" name="ak_js" value="13"/></p> </form> </div> </section> </section> <aside id="sidebar"> <section class="widget inner-text"> <h3>Related posts</h3> <article class="post"> <h2><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/07/20/software-options-for-niche-social-networks/">Software options for niche social networks<i class="icon-arrow-right-alt1"></i></a></h2> <p>So you want to create a niche social network? And you’ve read the prior post on overall issues to consider? Here’s an overview of over a dozen software platforms you might consider. Related posts: Open Source vs. proprietary software When deciding what software to use for a project, how do you decide on open source <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/07/20/software-options-for-niche-social-networks/">[…]</a></p> </article> <article class="post"> <h2><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/04/05/science-outreach-from-the-military-armed-with-science/">Science outreach from the military: Armed with Science<i class="icon-arrow-right-alt1"></i></a></h2> <p>Drones, spy robots, Mach 6 warplanes, new energy sources, and climate monitoring are just a few of the new technologies being developed by the U.S. military to fight the wars of the future. These technologies depend on cutting edge scientific knowledge, and are fantastic ways to get the military-oriented public (nearly 30 million Americans) excited about <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/04/05/science-outreach-from-the-military-armed-with-science/">[…]</a></p> </article> <article class="post"> <h2><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/03/31/mobile-product-development-principles-from-smithsonian/">Mobile product development principles – from Smithsonian<i class="icon-arrow-right-alt1"></i></a></h2> <p>Today, Nancy Proctor, the head of mobile strategy and initiatives for the Smithsonian Institution, gave an online talk about Smithsonian’s mobile strategy. Here are key points and comments Nancy shared about developing mobile products… Related posts: Web apps and native apps for museums: Museums & Mobile 2011 Museums are going mobile, and many companies are eager to <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/03/31/mobile-product-development-principles-from-smithsonian/">[…]</a></p> </article> <article class="post"> <h2><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/07/12/niche-social-networks-ravelry-exhibitfiles-and-others/">Niche social networks: Ravelry, ExhibitFiles, and others<i class="icon-arrow-right-alt1"></i></a></h2> <p>Thinking about launching a new niche social network for a science or cultural community of professionals? Think again. It costs a lot to do well, and there’s a major risk of failure. People don’t have much time to spend logging into yet another social network, and it’s hard to reach a critical mass so that the site <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/07/12/niche-social-networks-ravelry-exhibitfiles-and-others/">[…]</a></p> </article> <article class="post"> <h2><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2013/12/09/challenges-of-crowdsourcing-analysis-of-historypin/">Challenges of crowdsourcing: Analysis of Historypin<i class="icon-arrow-right-alt1"></i></a></h2> <p>Crowdsourcing can build virtual community, engage the public, and build large knowledge databases about science and culture. But what does it take, and how fast can you grow? For some insight, we look at a crowdsourced history site: Historypin is an appealing database of historical photos, with dates, locations, captions, and other metadata. It’s called History <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2013/12/09/challenges-of-crowdsourcing-analysis-of-historypin/">[…]</a></p> </article> </section> </aside> </div> </div> </div> </main> <aside class="info-links"> <div class="container"> <div class="left-holder"> <p><time datetime="2011">20 Jul 2011</time> , post by <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/author/idea/" title="Posts by IDEA" rel="author">IDEA</a></p> </div> <div class="right-holder"> <ul> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/social-network/">Social network</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/online-communities/">online communities</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/social-media-2/">social media</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/audience/">Audience</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/fundraising/">fundraising</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/community/">community</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/user-interface/">user interface</a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </aside> <aside class="items-holder"> <div class="container"> <div class="list-items widget-apps-widget"><h3>Read more about <br class="separator"><strong>our language-related apps.</strong></h3> <ul> <li> <div class="item-holder"> <a href="http://www.idea.org/otherwordly"> <picture>  <source srcset="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/otherwordly_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-35x36.png, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/otherwordly_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-70x70.png 2x" media="(max-width: 767px)"> <source srcset="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/otherwordly_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-70x70.png, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/otherwordly_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-140x140.png 2x">  <img src="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/otherwordly_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-70x70.png" alt=""> </picture> <span class="title" style="color:#c46e3c">OtherWordly</span> </a> </div> </li> <li> <div class="hr"></div> <div class="item-holder"> <a href="http://www.idea.org/inotherwords"> <picture>  <source srcset="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/inotherwords_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-35x36.png, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/inotherwords_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-70x70.png 2x" media="(max-width: 767px)"> <source srcset="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/inotherwords_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-70x70.png, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/inotherwords_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-140x140.png 2x">  <img src="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/inotherwords_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-70x70.png" alt=""> </picture> <span class="title" style="color:#8b8be0">In Other Words</span> </a> </div> </li> <li> <div class="hr"></div> <div class="item-holder"> <a href="http://www.idea.org/linguabase"> <picture>  <source srcset="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/linguabase_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-35x36.png, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/linguabase_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-70x70.png 2x" media="(max-width: 767px)"> <source srcset="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/linguabase_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-70x70.png, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/linguabase_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-140x140.png 2x">  <img src="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/linguabase_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-70x70.png" alt=""> </picture> <span class="title" style="color:#b859cc">Liguabase</span> </a> </div> </li> </ul> </div> </div> </aside> <footer id="footer"> <div class="container"> <nav class="page-nav"> <ul> <li id="menu-item-4498" class="menu-item menu-item-type-post_type menu-item-object-page menu-item-home menu-item-4498"><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/">Home</a></li> <li id="menu-item-4497" class="menu-item menu-item-type-post_type menu-item-object-page menu-item-4497"><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/about/">Mission & history</a></li> <li id="menu-item-4499" class="popup menu-item menu-item-type-custom menu-item-object-custom menu-item-4499"><a title="popup" class="js-btn-show-popups" href="#wrapper">Browse topics</a></li> <li id="menu-item-4666" class="menu-item menu-item-type-post_type menu-item-object-page menu-item-4666"><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/contact/">Contact IDEA</a></li> <li>Copyright © 2024 <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog">IDEA</a></li> </ul> </nav> </div> </footer> </div> <link rel='stylesheet' id='yarppRelatedCss-css' href='//www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/plugins/yet-another-related-posts-plugin/style/related.css' type='text/css' media='all' /> <script type='text/javascript'> /* <![CDATA[ */ var wpcf7 = {"apiSettings":{"root":"https:\/\/www.idea.org\/blog\/wp-json\/contact-form-7\/v1","namespace":"contact-form-7\/v1"},"cached":"1"}; 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Considerations for new niche social networks – IDEA