In reply to It’s A Facebook World … or is it?

nikoma•14th of June 2011

I belive that Facebook is here to stay, and yes I agree, that Facebook turns dating sites or social societys into virtually ghost towns. Let's face it. Many major politicians does have a profile here and they even communicate with the public through Facebook. An example of this is the leading rolefigure of NATO Anders Fogh Rasmussen. He has a Facebook profile. Who doesn't have a Facebook account? I have a Facebook account because my site has several modules, that connects to Facebook. I also use see more Facebook to do free advertising for my site via my many modules. That works too. So the key function of Facefook is for me, that I can get members from here on a daily basis. That is a fact and I see it as a good thing.

The next problem is, that Facebook user are used to, that its free to be online. I can't run my Dolphin script on a powerful HP server for absolutely free of charge. Its just not possible. Every 3 months I am struggling to pay for my server. So far, it would not have been possible without other incomes from another small business I am running. Without extra cash we might as well shut down and go to rest.

So what is it about Facebook, that makes it so popular? Certainly not the script alone. I am really not impressed, when looking at Facebooks key features. "My" Dolphin script is equal, if not better, than Facebook. I see Dolphin as the Mozilla Project. Its has a brilliant core and superb developers around the world who are comitted to develope outstanding modules. This happens everyday and this is why Dolphin is so perfect. Lets forget about Facebook for now.

It's a fact, that community sites or dating sites who has (local) succes has been around since at the beginning of the 2000's or those who achieved a later succes does have a load full of money to spend on advertising. It is not more complicated than that.

Here in Denmark I always compare "my" Dolphin script with the major dating sites who have succes and guess what? Their key features does not differentiate from Dolphin's features and my user are acutally saying, that my site can actually more than the most popular sites in Denmark. I knew that myself, so it is nice to hear because these succesful dating sites spend millions, yes it's true, millions on developing modules, that all are available on the market at Boonex for "nothing at all". How can say this? Because I know the main programmer on one of these sites.

So what does it take? It takes alot of advertising money to promote your Dolphin script and you need to get your members in there fast. Don't get that silly idea, that it depends on Dolphin. It does not. Its obvious, that a script with 250.000 members are more attractive than a site with almost nearly 2k in members. People wants to get entertained and they want to get entertained here and now - otherwise they'll move on. Maybe back to Facebook? Or maybe back to the older players on the market. Its not easy - its actually frustrating, when you know yourself that you have potential to become one of those top sites.

Facebook won't stop or kill it self. Facebook has that house clean potential to engage people who would never attend a dating site or other niche site and this is where we come in with Dolphin. This is where we can swin - if we have the proper amount of money to promote ourselves.

Facebook stays untill something better comes up, but what could that be?

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Andrew Boon•15th of June 2011•to nikoma

Thank you for your input! When I think about what makes Facebook popular the main thing that comes to mind is their approach of building simple yet working tools. We need to strip all the clutter from Dolphin and improve social interaction components to let you, our clients, build sites on top of bare bones, instead of re-tweaking a magnitude of existing features. It also needs to be cheaper to maintain (less server load).

I strongly believe that, like you said, success doesn't depend on the see more

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nikoma•15th of June 2011•to Andrew Boon

I agree again, Andrew! I said it before (I know its a stupid thing to say), but Dolphin needs to engage members more in a social way. Yes, I like the advanced features of Dolphin because I spend a lot of time using them, but many just want to interact with other human beings around simple, yet powerful tools. Facebook does that good and we need to replicate the human engaging modules into Dolphin.

The Script doesn't really matter - people just want to interact with other people. Scor.dk - a major see more

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