Okay, so I need a loan and I put myself on the system. Anyone with
money can offer to loan me that money. The interesting problem for the
lender would be how to credential the borrower.
Same thing with a car problem. Sally Martin happens to be great on
cars, all her friends say so, and she`ll fix my car`s front end for half the
cost I`m being quoted. Any warranties? What happens if she messes
something up and the front end falls off?
Good, so let`s get down to even simpler services. I need a babysitter,
and someone alleging to be a teenager offers the service. Do I know if
they`ve been in prison before?
Right now, everyone already is an entrepreneur. They either do
something about it or not. They either have some sort of credibility or
not. Nothing is stopping anyone from competing with anyone else about
anything.
ALL that being said, I think I`m seeing where you`re going with this,
maybe. It`s an online version of the college or apartment complex
bulletin board. It`s basically Craig`s List with some sort of "social
network" buzz words attached. And that`s fine, I`m not saying it`s a
bad idea.
What I`m thinking about is differentiation. There must be 10,000
"social networks" out there now, with names being bandied about by
everyone. So what? We, as a small business, have only a limited amount
of time and interest in all that stuff. We`re on various large
directories, we use a couple of well-known sites, but we`re more busy
doing business.
If you put this business together right now, do you have a sort of
"core constituency" available? For example, let`s say you live in a
town where you know a lot of people. You could put up the site, use
personal word-of-mouth to get it going, then see how it worked.
But to put up a site only because the techology exists seems a bit problematic to me.
CraigL2008-10-23 20:41:7