The Social Wave Blog by Sheldon Chang

There haven't been many entries into this blog because I've been very busy putting extra time into managing Social Wave. After the launch party on April 16th, the growth in membership has come at a slow, but steady pace. The public response to Social Wave's goals and purpose have been extremely positive, but the enthusiasm has yet to translate into active participation in an online and in-person community. There are signs of it starting to happen, but I have to admit being slightly disappointed with the creeping progress.

I gave a short talk to the Downtown Campbell Merchant's Association and spoke with many local merchants one on one. Almost to a person, they were excited by the idea of an online facilitator that could help them connect more closely with local residents and build old fashioned relationships. The response was similar at the launch party where over 35 people officially attended and many more either hung out without signing in or spent time at the welcome desk taking information and asking questions before heading out.

From the buzz in the air at the launch party, I'd have predicted a rush of sign-ups from everyone who took information or came to the party. That didn't happen and I'm left having to solve the question of what could be done to translate excitement to active accounts. It may be too soon to tell, or it might be that there's still a missing piece that will elevate Social Wave into the role of a true community network from just another "me too" social network".

Earlier, I wrote that Social Wave really isn't a "Social Network," but a Community Network. The lines of relationship do not follow the lines of a person's friend and family ties, but lines of physical proximity joined by a desire to develop social relationships regardless of personal diversity. To do this, an online system must support the human motives that drives them to seek community ties vs. purely social ties.

If I'm correct in my assumption, then the accelerated adoption that I'm looking for may not come until I give the early adopting members of Social Wave all of those reasons. Despite the expressed desire to exist in a collective space, it may be the economic motives that will finally bring Social Wave to the status that I believe it deserves to have. I'll get to test this in about a month when Social Wave's Hometown Merchant Network is unveiled.

Thanks to a step-up in recent publicity attempts, sign-ups for my prototype Social Wave network have been steadily increasing. As new members are signing up, I'm noticing a trend that I'm please to see, but wasn't expecting. Older users are signing up and many of them haven't even heard of Friendster or only know of it by name only.

The assumption all along from myself and others around me was that Social Wave would be facing stiff competition from people who were already avid users of one of the many popular Social Networks like Tribe, Friendster, or Ryze. My expectation was to compete for the "young, hip, urban" demographic that had gotten tired of the ephemeral nature of online social networks and hope that enough older users could be coaxed into participating now and then online.

Advertising for the Social Wave Campbell network was done online to the "hip-young" demographic and via printed hand-outs to an older group. So far it's the older group that has responded to the call to community online and in-person. These results are surprising, but hopeful for the possibility of having found an overlooked demographic looking for social outlets that make sense to them. For now, I'm leaving my observations as anecdotal evidence. If I have enough of a sample size in a few weeks to show a definite trend, I'll post them.