It seems like the difference between success and failure these days boils down to an ounce of something special. To eliminate the image from the Simpsons of “mayo left in the sun,” let’s call it magic sauce.
It normally boils down to subtle decisions in the interface or formula that means the difference between success and failure. Example: creating a MySpace account to view photos. Millions of MySpace pages were created to look at photos of others, creating a pyramid scheme of user adoption. On TheFunded, it was public and private reviews: what did the private reviews actually say? Thousands of CEO’s signed up to find out, and then added their own reviews.
I have been thinking about the magic sauce for Mahalo, run by my friend, Jason Calacanis. The business is too complex right now with dozens of moving parts. Paying posters. Editing the content. Updating old content. Building a search engine. Generating traffic. Developing ad relationships. Sounds like a lot to do with no easy win in sight. Check out the content creation methodology, which was complex in-and-of itself:
Is there a magic sauce way to get users to create content FOR FREE? I bet there is. I also bet that you can encourage them to be honest and update the content with financial and social rewards. Then, do you really need to have a “search engine,” or do you rely on a Wikipedia effect? … Just some thoughts.
