These days it seems like new social networking websites are popping up like it’s going out of style. The main problem with this is that most of them are being created in the hopes of making the owners rich instead of building a thriving community. Here are the main reasons why most of them fail, and how they might be able to avoid failure:
Don’t be a copycat
[MySpace](http://www.myspace.com) and [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com) have been out for years and are established, which is why you should not try and overtake them. There is nothing wrong with taking a piece of their pie, but copying them outright is not a smart idea because if you are creating just another me-too service why will people switch to your social network? If you just have an exact replica of MySpace of Facebook, chances are that you will fail. There are a few exceptions to this, such as [Bebo](http://www.bebo.com) who took over the U.K. market because the U.K. market was being underserved by MySpace. If you are trying to grab a piece of the pie from a bigger, well established social network, that’s fine but make sure you are not just copying them.
Carve your niche
A lot of the new networks that are being released are so broad that the costs of marketing them and gaining users are too high. It is hard to dominate whole markets such as the sports industry unless you have millions of dollars at your disposal, but it may be a lot easier to dominate a market such as skateboarding. You might not make as much money going this route, but if you carve your niche your chances of success are much higher. Later on, you can always decide to expand like [Facebook](http://mashable.com/2006/09/26/facebook-regions/), but first you need to build a strong user base.
Be prepared for the worst
One of the most important things when releasing a social network is to make sure you can handle the load. The last thing you want is a million people waiting to use your service when you can only handle a few thousand users. Although this seems like a good problem to have, this is only true if you have the resources to act quick and scale your website. [Friendster](http://socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/2003/10/24/why-friendster-is-so-slow-one-of-our-readers-responds/) had this issue a while back and it hurt them drastically because people started to turn to alternatives such as MySpace before Friendster solved their scaling issues.
You, you, and you
Many of these new social networks that are being created ignore users’ needs. Advertisements are put from day one and the community members are being ignored. These social networks are all about monetizing users instead of figuring out how to make them happy and making sure they keep coming back. This may work for sites like MySpace, but they were one of the firsts to enter the market and because of their market share they have the traffic that allows them to do what they want. For new social networks, users have to be satisfied first or else they will turn else where.
Some of these things might seem obvious to many of you, but you would be surprised by how many people I have talked to that fail to realize these points. Understanding what motivates your users and using this knowledge to create a community that grows itself is ultimately the most important factor that determines success or failure for your social network. The “breakout” social networks such as MySpace, Bebo, YouTube, Flickr, to name a few have mastered these tactics.