The cold start problem

Considering I'm building up a social network app, I decided to read the book The Cold Start Problem in order to learn more about social networks. To me surprise, there is a ton to learn and I wanted to know more about this because I love communities and I think all my apps from now on should have a social network touch built in them. Because this topic is so broad, I'll make several posts about it.

We're gonna start today with with a problem all social networks apps hit, and I'd argue that a lot of non-social network apps face as well, and it's the cold start problem.

The key of a social network app is the people who uses it, right? If there is nobody, then it's useless. But this is exactly what happens when you actually create a new social network, is empty. So it's kind of a chicken and an egg situation and this is called the cold start problem.

How to make people use an app in its early days is the most difficult part in my opinion, this happens as well in non social network apps but these apps are not affected by the lack of people, their core is something else. There is a moment in the life of a social app, where you solve the cold start problem, but then you'll face other new challenges.

To solve the cold start problem there are several things that can be done.

1. Normally all social network apps have a hard side of users, which are your power users basically. In a marketplace these are the sellers, in Youtube/Twitch these are streamers, etc. You should focus on them first rather than in the mere consumers of your app. Hard side of your network will lift you.
2. Track zeroes. There is a lot to explain about analytics but I won't go into details in this post, I'll summarise like follows: Track down when users don't get the outcome your app is meant to solve. For example, if I want to take a taxi but there is none available, that's a zero. You should avoid at all cost the number of zeroes.
3. Make a good product that is simple to use and solve a hard problem. This is kind of self-explanatory, so just make sure your product doesn't suck hard and make it free if it's a social network.
4. The atomic network. This is the most important piece in my opinion and explains how Facebook managed to expand around the globe. Basically you need to avoid people finding crickets when they join, so you focus and make all efforts to create an atomic network. This is basically your social network app working on a tiny scale with certain people from a location. Facebook started with campuses so you should focus somewhere as well.

And this is for now a short summary about the first stage in an app life with network effects. What are network effects I hear you ask? Well that's a topic for another post. For now, let me know if you have learnt something useful and if so, please let me know! It really motivates me to continue sharing the knowledge I acquire.