encourage user participation

First, we view status seeking as a social passion that drives participants to invest time and effort in giving the gift of their experience to others without direct benefit to themselves; and second, this social passion is a reliable source of continuing participation, making it more likely that virtual communities will survive and grow.

8) Not Enabling Recommendations

9) Failing to Set a Good Example

10) Failure to See the Larger War

The best tools do one thing very well. It nails a certain activity to the wall and really makes it simple and easy. Hammers drive in nails. Del.icio.us saves bookmarks. Netflix sends you movies. Photoshop enables image editing. iTunes plays music, etc. All of these tools actually have other uses, but that’s the 1%. We naturally gravitate toward software with a single purpose because its easier to remember and we know exactly what we’re doing when we’re using it.

1) Underestimating The Cold Start Problem

you have to build your own attention momentum over time

Strong social sites build value one user at a time. If one user finds value, then they’re much more likely to tell others or invite their friends.