Driving traffic is one of the most challenging, yet important goals facing social networks and other online communities. However, if you have the developmental resources, you may want to focus on an additional strategy – weaving social trust features into an otherwise generic infrastructure, delivering new levels of safety and security to users.
The industry is saturated with social networking sites these days. While most cater to specific groups based on interest, demographic, etc., the structural features are mostly the same. What many of these networks are missing is a way to validate members with social trust guidelines. Social trust refers to the personal real-life connections between members of online communities. Many social sites encourage users to connect with their "friends." However, over time, users tend to collect hundreds, sometimes even thousands of so-called "friends." What they need now is a way to better describe, display and link the nature of these connections. This helps users understand whether their "friends" or other peoples' "friends," are really complete strangers or worse, scammers.
I encourage you to ask yourself the following questions to understand the level of social trust your network currently provides:
1. How are "relationships" defined? Is there a way to browse members to differentiate between two people who are, for example, best friends and in contact daily from those who were in first grade together and haven't spoken since? Why is this important? Say, for instance, you're a job seeker that has run a search on the site. You find an exciting potential employer who is connected to an acquaintance of yours. It's valuable to your efforts to know whether your acquaintance has a close relationship with the recruiter or a distant one.
2. Can you display the connections between users who are not acquainted? A user's network is generally comprised of the friends a user invites or is invited by, as well as friends of friends. In Facebook, users can also belong to networks based on where they live, work or go to school, creating networks of people who may not know each other directly but are likely to be connected through mutual acquaintances. Those connections can be displayed in "human paths" – think 6 Degrees of Separation or "the Kevin Bacon game." LinkedIn, for example, uses a human path feature to help professionals get introductions or recommendations for career opportunities, but you'll find that this is a method users will come to rely on in virtually any type of niche network.
3. How do you obtain richer connections? Although users are increasingly demanding more in-depth connections, the next task is determined by how to collect and display information through your interface. First, in order to obtain richer two-way information on each connection, you'll need to make a more sophisticated connection process an intrinsic part of the user experience. Those connections must be volunteered by users who understand the benefit of providing the information. The information must then be incorporated into different areas of your site – such as user profiles or the connection paths between members.
Note that Facebook no longer offers the option of letting users select how they know each other from a short drop down list in the friend request area. Perhaps this is because it's not just about collecting the information, but more importantly, what you are planning to do with it. How will those connections be used to help foster trust between members? This is what Facebook failed to do before, and I wouldn't be surprised if a more comprehensive solution is in the works.
Enhancing and enriching social networks with social trust technology is an important step in online evolution. Even non-profits are now using social trust technology to show the influence of a user's charity on their friends, followed by their friends of friends, etc; a powerful incentive for do-gooders. So whatever your social network is about – dogs, dating, or even travel recommendations – you can help your users by deepening their social connections and displaying them in more structured ways, to create a more competitive social network.
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Tuvia Rosenthal is the Cofounder and CEO of international dating network for professionals - Meezoog.com. Meezoog is owned by Tros Interactive, the leading developer of social trust network platforms.
