Lessons I Learned from a Social Network's Incompetetence

There is this social network - and I use the term very loosely - which is quite famous in certain circles. It is not Facebook, or MySpace, or anything so conventional - it appeals to a niche market.

The site owner is notorious for committing atrocities against his own members, all for personal gain. And, while it is not my intention to here document all of the site's crimes against humanity, I do want to point out the lessons that can be learned from them.

So here they are, available for anyone thinking about running a membership-based site or organization, the Lessons I Learned from a Social Network's Incompetence:

1. Do not belittle or ignore your members. This causes frustration and abandonment.
2. Do not penalize your members for talking about you or your competition. If you can't handle people talking about what you're doing wrong, then you don't deserve to hear them talking about what you're doing right. If your members are talking about your competition, perhaps it is because they see something better than what you have to offer - this is an opportunity to improve!
3. Make basic tools free and easy to use. Making your members to pay for basic tools (like chat, etc.) will do only one thing: drive them to the competition, who is offering them for free.
4. Make information easy to find and use. Requiring members or users to navigate labyrinthine menus or use complicated procedures just to find information will lead to a lot of emails for you and frustration for them.
5. Let your members - not you - decide if they belong. The whole point of a club or social site or gathering is so that people who share interests can share those interests together. When you start singling out individuals and telling them that they aren't "XYZ-enough" you are going against organic flow and variable individuality amongst people - in essence, you are forcing your group in an unnatural direction. This can create a lot of bad PR and ill-will. Be careful, or you just may force it down the drain!
6. Place advertising appropriately. I cannot emphasize this enough. Don't just throw ads any place you like - put some thought into it, make it fit with the decor or layout. And don't force people to see them, to the point that the advertising is blocking or handicapping everything else.
7. Customer service should not be abandoned. This goes hand-in-hand with our first item on this list. Offering support and service, and then not backing that offer up, will do more damage to your credibility than just about anything. Remember: they are members, not assets.