We recently launched a website focused exclusively on the concept of “digital humanity.” In other words, bringing good acts to the virtual scene and celebrating them. Dighu.com provides an ongoing forum to share your good deed(s) for the day, and see how others are paying it forward in different areas of your life. It’s a great concept, and one that I feel confident will quickly gain exposure.

While we’ve built several niche social networking websites, I don’t always personally fall within the target demographic for the website, but this site has engaged me in a way that few others have. When I’m not posting regularly, I can’t help but wonder if may not be doing enough regular good deeds. But when I do, I know that I am making time despite my busy schedule to go out of my way to do good things.

Admittedly sometimes it is hard to add conscious good acts to your to-do list. Work, family, friends, fun, more work, always so much to do. And in this economy, it’s harder and harder to budget for donations to charities and non-profits. There are many ways, however, to give to others without reaching for your wallet. As they say, “the smallest good deed is better than the grandest intention,” so it is our hope that through this socially conscious network, people across the globe will make the time to act on their good intentions and share those acts through www.dighu.com. Did you dighu?

Twitter is a great example of simplicity. A straightforward concept with a clean user interface. It may almost be too simple because I don’t fully “get it” sometimes. That could be that I’m still searching for my purpose on Twitter. As you might guess I have a hard time keeping anything beyond a URL under 140 characters.

On the flip side, Facebook is a growing example of the ultimate end-all be-all social network experience, packed with functionality–plenty of buttons to click and things to do. Thus, the dilemma when embarking on a social network concept. Aim for simplicity, or mash Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and eHarmony into one website and hope that it ultimately outgrows and outshines them all?

The more features you build into your network, the more time it will take and the more expensive your development fees will be. That represents your investment as well as the opportunity costs of launching months or potentially years after you feasibly could. As a builder of social networking websites, you might think that I would push for more features to sell bigger projects, but more often than not I will vote for the simple concept or the scaled down “Phase 1″ feature list. My philosophy is that you can always roll out more features down the road. It’s never too late to do this, but it can be too early in some cases.

I honestly find myself much more excited to work on the simpler websites that come through our doors. With the overall mission or goal of the site being simplified, it provides an opportunity to really optimize a few screens with a handful of key functions. Find the most intuitive experience to engage your users immediately and have them coming back for more without needing to think too hard or search too far. Once they like what they see and can do, that I feel is the time to surprise and reward your user base with new fun features to try out!

Looking at the potential features to build into a network is like being a kid in a candy store… for some. So how do you scale down your concept to achieve a simple but successful concept?

• Find your target audience. Don’t say “everybody.” Think about the specific type of users you want participating on the site. Then think about what they would want to see and do most. This feature should ideally be what fundamentally sets you apart from competing sites. Build off that one group and that key user experience to flesh out the most imperative features for your beta launch.
• In the struggle to identify these key features, don’t feel as if you are relinquishing other features that you really do want. Draft a running Phase 2 list. Once you launch your beta and start growing your initial user base, you’ll be able to periodically add in new features from this list, as well as feedback on desired features that you’ll likely receive from your users. Remember that what you think is critical may not necessarily be what keeps your users coming back. Your community will let you know through their activity and website feedback what they want to see to improve their experience. Even better, collect a focus group and survey what features they would find most helpful!

• Functionality aside, less can be more when it comes to design as well. Web 2.0, shiny, crisp and clean are all terms that our designers like to hear most of the time. It’s a style of design that is minimalist and uses subtle design elements to guide the user experience without overwhelming them with loud or overly intense graphics. This is not always the case of course, as sometimes a site theme calls for a bold color palette or rich, textured graphics. But over the years I have grown to appreciate the many shades of gray that can make up a very elegant design.
• Look to the social network giants as examples of what to do and not to do. While Facebook has an abundance of features, they still have a classic user interface, unlike it’s former rival MySpace which quickly became synonymous with sparkly graphics and cluttered pages. This out of control user experience may have been a key factor in its decline in popularity, especially in certain demographics.

In our consumer-driven society, it’s increasingly difficult to “keep it simple.” There are so many choices, so many possibilities. We rarely get to the store getting only what we set out to buy, we often walk away with much more, some of which we don’t really need or ultimately use. Don’t let your development project turn into a wasteful impulse buy. Drill down to achieve a sensible development plan and remember that simplicity can make all the difference.

In the past I have always sort of scoffed at those little motivational messages, like “Set a timer for 5 minutes and finish your task!” Pffft. Whatever, I’ll get it done in my own time, my own way. Well, now I realize that this is actually a very effective way to get a lot done in a short period of time. But because very little on my task list can be done in 5 minutes, my timer is set at around 3 hours. This happens to coincide with how long little Eva sleeps! After I get her comfortably and 100% sleeping, the timer begins.

My typical day involves checking email, updating the project schedule, making sure all our employees have questions answered and a work agenda for the day, lunch, more emails, maybe some design and/or brainstorming, and if I absolutely have nothing else to do, dreaded paperwork. Paperwork includes payroll, retirement contributions, organizing papers for filing, budgeting, taxes, bills (ick!) and anything that requires a call to customer service (double ick!). This is usually the very last thing on my agenda. Of all the hats I wear in the office, the finance manager role is my least favorite. But alas, the work still needs to be done and as much as I may dread it or procrastinate, typically it’s just faster if I do it instead of delegating. If we hit it big, this will likely be the first position I hire for! (more…)

Venture capital (also known as VC or Venture) is a type of private equity capital typically provided for early-stage, high-potential, growth companies in the interest of generating a return through an eventual realization event such as an IPO or trade sale of the company. Venture capital investments are generally made as cash in exchange for shares in the invested company. [wikipedia]

I’ll be the first one to admit that I don’t know all that much about VC or the process of acquiring it, so I figured that I might as well share a little about my experience as I learn how to navigate through this community. Even though the chances of women CEOs getting VC are increasingly slim, I like beating the odds, so hopefully this series doesn’t end with, “Giving up on Venture Capital Quest: Part 27.”

To date, my experiences with VC have primarily been through various clients. Typically clients come to us with an idea for a unique social network, and some who treat the project as a serious investment often supplement their own monies with third-party funding in the form of venture capital. This funding might be secured at the onset of the project, partially through the development, or after the site has launched and proven itself to its community and potential investors. We rarely if ever connect directly with clients’ investors, but indirectly, we contribute to the process of securing funding pretty significantly, if that is in the form of a prototype or demo, a fully functioning network, or very early on through a detailed design and development plan that goes into the clients’ business plan.

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According to Wikipedia:

Design by committee is a term referring to a style of design and its resultant output when a group of entities comes together to produce something, particularly in the presence of poor and incompetent leadership. The defining characteristics of “design by committee” are needless complexity, internal inconsistency, logical flaws, banality, and the lack of a unifying vision.

I couldn’t put it better myself really. While I wear many professional hats these days–creative director, project manager, HR, office therapist, etc.–when I started this whole wild journey I was primarily driven by a love for art and graphic design. This evolved into a desire to bring this high-tech art to the web in order to facilitate and enhance the user experience. I care about aesthetics. I care about color, composition and how these subtleties resonate with the intended audience. What may be a home run for one client’s website audience could easily be all wrong for anothers, as evidenced by the broad range of designs in our portfolio, from a Russian beauty product site to a Twilight enthusiast social network.

I’ve run into a few frustrating “design by committee” situations with clients. One organization actually showed our initial layout mock-up to a room full of complete strangers who were renting their conference room and sent us their feedback. Hmmm. Frequently some of our start-up clients pass our designs around their circle of friends and family, and while certainly everyone is entitled to an opinion, not everyone is tapped into the big picture of what we’re doing, which is integral to giving quality feedback. (more…)