Sunday Thoughts
Social media startups are REITS: A REIT is a company dedicated to owning, and in most cases, operating income-producing real estate. Back in the early days of social sites, the only real estate being used to generate revenue was side bars and banner ads. In the ‘now’ economy it is important to think of your site like a mall operator. What spaces and subdomains might be available to license to other startups or retailers to add additional revenue streams. The sites that think like this will be much more attractive to investors and potential suitors.
Finding friends: Social sites should leverage Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook APIs to permit users to find additional friends from those sites. Using Gmail (or AIM, or worse - Yahoo!) isn’t effective any more since more and more people are communicating and collaborating from social networking sites, not just email.
(Un)classes: (un)classes is a social site that looks to bring its users together in the real world. The site allows users to create and host classes on any subject matter which other users can then search, sign up for and attend. They can be free, or for a fee. Think local —> (un)classes should open up their API to how-to video sites to add a geo-specific revenue stream to instructors on those sites.
