Social Networking Sites: The Bad (Part II)

Ok, so I hit the obvious shortcomings on MySpace in Part I. Here are a few other to discuss amongst yourselves:

Technical Shortcomings: features such as email, blogs, instant messenger, adding to favorites, etc which are to creating community interaction and cohesion don't always work. Many, many times I have been unable to send a mail or execute a search, and then the annoying message comes up that tells me an error has occurred which has been forwarded to the technical team. MySpace's (and to a lesser extent FaceBook) functioning (or non-functioning) technology does not inspire much confidence. Even when it does work, the functionality takes far too long to execute. Try adjusting a search and then rerunning. Hanging, Hanging, Hanging. Trust me...it's NOT my connection!

Any quality social network site should be 100% buttoned up on every piece of user-facing, interactive functionality. The current leaders fall way short in this respect.

Not Viral enough: Since social networks can't afford to acquire much traffic and still remain profitable, having a compelling site it the obvious first step. However, these sites have to make it drop-dead easy for current memebers to invite, entice, and draw new users. MySpace has plenty of ways to connect with current users. I can add them to favorites, request them to become my friend, email them directly, rank them, etc. Recently, however, I wanted to invite my brother to become one of my friends. I went to my home page and looked for a way to shoot him a quick invitation in a nice HTML email that would explain to him why he should join MySpace and what's cool about my site and my friends. The best the can do is offer a static URL that can be copied in a mail (or used as your hotmail signature). Why can't the offer a pretty little email invitation touting the benefits of MySpace. Perhaps they aren't worried about new members as much since they have over 50 million members. Everyone and their dog seems to have a page. However, this would be such a small, easy change to make that would pay huge dividends. It would also likely serve them well in overseas markets where MySpace has low penetration. Other social networking sites can't afford not to offer current members every opportunity and functional tool to refer non-member friends to the community. IMO, it's a big miss on MySpace.