Recently I was describing our business to an astute investor. As we talked about the business — the social network aspect in particular — it became clear how broadly this term is used when describing web-based businesses. Yet these businesses can be dramatically different.

In order to clarify our strategy, I coined a new term: “Social Reference Site.” I did some quick searching, and didn’t find this terminology in use. In fact, I didn’t find much discussion or good terminology for articulating the different ways in which websites are including social networks as a part of their product. In response, I’ll put forward the term “social reference site” and how it differentiates from more traditional social networks.

Social Reference Sites (SRS)

• Reference sites replace “content directories”
• High value for non-participants
• Majority of traffic from search engines is common
• Small clusters of users add significant value and have their own social interactions within the directory site

Social Networks (SN)

• Sites replace a communication vehicle
• Low value for non-participants
• Majority of traffic from direct navigation
• All users add value

The following table shows the distinction between them. Note that the “displaced product” category is a substantial simplification, but speaks to the core value proposition that drives most traffic. Also, these example sites are illustrative only.

I’m interested to hear others thoughts on this…

Chris “the-brum-0-later” Brummel has joined the conspiracy full time.

We’re thrilled to have him. In addition to cranking out front end code, he’ll be be making sure we’ve got the slickest-looking site in the local events space. He’s sitting in Cube #472, in sector G, on the fifth floor of the worldwide headquarters (until Jeremy returns…)

It’s true! As reported by John Cook of the PI, Mike Showalter has joined Green Couch Conspiracy as the new VP of Product Management.

This is a big win for us. The role of product management - understanding users’ needs and designing the right application - is absolutely crucial to web startups. We’re thrilled to have Mike join us. He comes from Marchex, and before that… Serials Solutions, where he was Group Product Manager, and instrumental in launching 5 web-based applications in 5 years. All of which continue to be leaders in their categories today.

I’ll let other celebrities sum it up:

“The best ever!” — Ricky Bobby

“They’re SUPER-CHARGED with Mike Showalter on board!” — JR Jenkins (local product management celebrity)

Welcome aboard, Sho.

With our private beta coming online, it’s time to give a quick heads-up on our philosophy about releasing. About a week ago I came across this post which does a great job of summarizing two choices for going to market: Big Bang vs. Darwinian Evolution.

There’s no need to repeat it all, but suffice it to say, we’re not doing the late ’90’s dot com approach of trying to build version 5.0 and launch with a colossal party (fun as that might be). We’re committed to the other path: release early and often. The value of getting our product in the hands of users, and then listening and acting on that feedback, can’t be overstated. This approach was one of our keys to success at Serials Solutions. Our release cycles were shorter than our competitors, we were more serious about listening to our users, and we responded faster. As a result, we were able to win in product lines where competitors had multi-year head-starts on us. We’re taking it up a notch here, with a serious commitment to agile development.

We’ll be reaching out to more people over the upcoming weeks, inviting them to check out the service and provide feedback. Yes, you will find some big bugs, missing functionality, and strange use cases. The servers will probably bonk out as well. But we’ve got a great team in place, we’re squashing the bugs, and growing the application fast.

Best of all, the earliest users will be able to say “I saw it when…”

I attended the “nakedtruth / Madrona / Redfin / panel discussion / party” last night. (Not sure of the name, but thanks for the invite, Greg)

An interesting panel and a packed house with great people. The biggest take-away for me is that, yes, it’s time for me to stop ignoring our blog.

I’ve been avoiding it for two reasons: First, joining a company of all technologists means there’s a massive amount of work that needs to be done immediately. It made sense to be purely inwardly focused at first. There’s still no shortage of work to do, but as our Private Alpha is getting ready to go and we’re talking with more and more people, the time has come.

Second, the role of blogs had a mixed track record in our prior industry. Serials Solutions was (and I trust, still is) an industry leader in the library technology space. We innovated not just products, but ways of thinking about problems faced by librarians and patrons. This required following a lot of blogs. There are a few excellent, bell-weather blogs in the library industry, but there are too many that need to be tracked, but ultimately say nothing. This may be true across the board, but I’d rather not contribute to the problem with yet one more.

I guess we’ll just have to risk it. I’m officially joining in the mix…