leverage the social graph

8/2/2019 Leverage the Social Graph

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Liang Zhang

2012.3

How to acquire 10 million usersin 10 weeks with 10 employees?

10 | 10 | 10


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It empowered fastest growth ever


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.. and very powerful!

Scalability: super linear value creation

UGC: unlimited producers vs. people you can hire

Growth: potential connections vs. limited ads

Stickiness: the power of active connection

Long tail: centralized vs. decentralized

Switching Cost Winner-takes-all


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2 Questions

How did they get exponential growth?

What did they do?

What kind of products fit this model?

How to leverage the social graph?

What do we have now?

Whats the way to learn?


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TO BUILD A REAL SOCIAL PRODUCT


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What is the Network Effect?

When the value of a product to one user

depends on how many other users there are.

- Shapiro, Varian

The value of a network is proportional to the

square of the number of connected users of

the system (n2)

- Metcalfes Law


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Information Services vs. Networks

Information Services

Core Value: collecting and processing data

Yahoo!, Google, YouTube, Flickr

Network Services

Core Value: facilitating a relationship between

people and groups

eBay, Paypal, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest

Moving data is hard, moving people is hard


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What makes a good social product?

A real (not new) demand

Easy to use

Target a niche demographic first

Kickoff with some power users

Dual Engines of social

Inner social: what makes people interact?

Outer social: how to drive people collect or sharearound?

First to market and Promote hard


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Fundamental things

Demand Easier to use Demographic Power Users

Paypal Wire money Credit card eBay users eBay users

LinkedIn Job Personal Page Valley people VCs

MySpace Self-expression Personal Page Music fans Rock band

Facebook Social Personal Page Students Ivy League

Twitter Self-expression Blog Bloggers Famous

Tumblr Self-expression Blog Bloggers Desingers

Zynga Game Casual Game Facebook users Pokers

Instagram Photo Lomo Camera iPhone users PhotographerPinterest Wish list Pin Board Housewives Designers

Groupon Local Shopping Group Buying Chicago

Airbnb Accommodation Airbed Mkt Craigslist users Craigslist users


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Dual Engines of social

Inner Engine of Social

- Very intuitive: pictures are very

easy to read

- Something useful: wish list

- Demographic: 30+ women

- East to start: already well curated

stuff

- Good Design

- Leverage Facebook and Twitters

social graph to follow your

friends pin boards

- Engine of Viral: Re-Pin

Outer Engine of Social- a Pin bookmarklet

to collect all kinds

of pictures

- Pin it button on

other sites

Outer Engine of Social- Share user activities

on Facebook

- Spam user with all

kinds of activities

Initial Traction

- Invite Art/Designing

but not Tech Blogs

to write about it

- Only By Invitation


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Common mechanisms of

inner engine of social Follow/ Refollow/ Recommendation/ Matching

Make people connected, fast!

Repost/ Retweet/ Repin Lower the cost of content creation/ curation

To group Crowdsourcing

Interaction Loop Steal your friends vegetables

Draw and guess with your friends

Game mechanisms: tasks and rewards LinkedIn: profile complement;

Weibo: how many followers, comments, repost


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First to market and Promote hard

eBay vs. Onsale Craigslist vs. Kijiji

Zynga vs. Playfish

Foursquare vs. Gowalla

Weibo vs. Diandian


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Case Study: Draw Something

Inner Engine of Social

- Interaction Loop: Draw and

Guess

- Incentives: Coins, Colors,

Bombs, Record

- Psychology:Its ok to play with strangers.

Its good to play with friends.

Its great to play with people

you know but not familiar.

Outer Engine of Social

- Add friends:

Facebook and

Twitter API

- Share on Facebook,

Twitter and

Pinterest

Fundamentals

- Demand: A proven product on web (Pictionary)

- Easiness: 15 seconds of drawing and asynchronous interaction

- Demographic: iOS users

- Power users: Drawers

- First to market and polished enough

First Traction

- No 1. on both

Top Paid / FreeApps list


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Evolution of the Social Service

Personal

page

MySpace

Facebook

Blog Tumblr Pinterest

Twitter

Easier to use

Easier to use

Timeline;

Open API;

Real relationship

Easier to write;

Retweet;

Timeline;

Better design;

Repost;

Timeline;

Pin it

bookmarkelet

Is there a

better way to

empower theconnection of

people?


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TO LEVERAGE THE SOCIAL GRAPH


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Social marketing before Facebook

Paypal Launch on the eBay platform

Pay $10 for signing up plus $10 per referral

Yelp Host Yelp parties to make people write reviews

LinkedIn Reid Hoffmans relationships

Refuse to meet VCs until they adopted LinkedIn An Outlook contact uploader

Invitation reminders that expired after two weeks


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Social Marketing on Facebook

Time line: NFO

Fan Page: like/ comment/ share/ write about it

Access to users information through API

Ads:


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What you can get from Facebook

Access my basic information

Includes name, profile picture,

gender, networks, user ID, list of

friends, and any other information

I've made public

Access my profile information

About Me, Birthday, Hometown,

Current City, Education History and

Work History

Access information people sharewith me

Birthdays, Hometowns, Current

Cities, Education History and Work

HistorySend me email

gtrot may email me directly at

[email protected] Post on my behalf

gtrot may post on my behalf,

including status updates, photos andmore.Access my data any time

gtrot may access my data when I'm

not using the application.Check-ins

gtrot may read my check-ins and

friends' check-ins.


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The Zynga Way (1)

Before you even get startedplaying youre prompted to:

Become a Fan/Like (so theycan push updates throughyour news stream)

Invite your friends (pro tip:make it look like its required)

Share this page on your newsstream

They again remind you right atthe start of the game:


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The Zynga Way (2)

All kinds of ways of SPAM


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Pinterest Way

Pinterest: Since launching their open graph integrationless than a month ago, the number of Facebook usersvisiting Pinterest every day has increased by more than60%.

- Facebook

Automatically follow your friends from Facebook and spamthem on Facebook and in mail


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Some local ways

On Renren

Create 5 accounts as classmates

Add 1000+ friends in one area

Repost some ads

Target: Renrens sharing homepage

Example:

10

CPS


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Some local ways

On Weibo

Popular topics: Jokes, Girls, Astro, Travel, Movie

Multiple accounts, cross promotion

Proactive follow others for refollow Write some scripts to follow/ comment/ message

On Pinterest clone

Write some scripts to pin and repin Mogujie: 78% collusion, 22% reliable, 3% high

quality contents


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Case Study: Dui.lu


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Thanks!

leverage the social graph

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