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There are not many moneymaking opportunities that have not been promoted to death on the Internet, and the ones that use the Internet itself as part of the get-rich-quick formula are a huge fraction of the total. When software developers look at the Internet, however, they can see opportunities in the behavior of every demographic or population cohort, all over the world. The Internet "hit parade" over the past several years has shown that social sites-for chatting, sharing mutual interests, creating communities, and dating-are doing quite well, thank you very much. If you want to develop dating and/or community software, you have to have two separate lines (at least) of those famous "ducks in a row." First, of course, you need to have all the techno-chops needed to construct, debug and deploy your brilliant software. On top of that, of course, there is some real work. This is not to disparage the long hours of coding, browser compatibility checking and other caffeine-fueled activities. This is meant to convey the greater importance of the programs' features over the utility and dependability of the software itself. Levels of "users" When you think about community and dating software, the features that you envision (and incorporate) should be framed in your mind as "benefits to the users." There are always long lists of options and scripts and suites that you could include, so many that you can get stuck determining a feature set before you ever get started. How do you decide what is important? Who will be impacted by your decisions, and how? Obviously (or not so obviously) the most important things are what the users will consider most important. You are thinking of two levels of users, too. The first level includes the people who buy the software and build a new community or dating site. However, you also have to "think through" that level to the users they are attempting to reach and sign up. The buyers of your program are users, and the people they attract to their new sites are both their "users" and yours, too. As much as possible, think in terms of what features and associated user benefits will apply to both of them, individually and together. Use, abuse and trust Clearly, ease of use is tops on most lists. Not every Internet entrepreneur is a "coder" or a computer geek. Some (many?) are simply entrepreneurs who see an opportunity with a "new thing" and go for it. In this case, your decision to make the program easy to install and maintain for the webmasters, while keeping ease of use a focus of the end-user experience, too, will pay double dividends. Site builders will appreciate your program's usability, a consideration that is often followed closely by the desire for customizability. It's great to have the ability to build out a powerful, comprehensive and automated online dating or social networking site, but some of the cookie-cutter and building-block approaches do not give you the option to do much customizing. A key feature, customizability, yields a crucial benefit to the software user, which is a unique identity. Not only will the site look different (one would hope) than all the rest, it needs to have an "operational character" all its own, meaning that unique identity that results from following one's own formula. If your software program helps people build dating or community sites without helping them build unique, personalized, distinctive ones, then it fails a key test. Common needs uncommonly met It is, as always, a matter of balance. The people building dating and social networking communities need to display a site that "looks and feels" like the right kind of place, without being either (1) devoid of personality or (2) a knock-off of some other site(s). You need to give your software users the ability to build fully functioning, automated websites in short order, with all the requisite features found at other leading sites of its kind-but still have room to personalize it and add more value. At all of these communitarian websites, members are able to create profiles, upload images (still and video) and music, seek out and interact with other members, send and receive e-mails, initiate text and even video chat sessions, add/delete "friends" or "fans" and much more. It is how webmasters accomplish and manage these things that will differentiate their sites from the pack. Make it easy for users of your software program to modify design themes and feature sets, keeping components fully editable and adjustable to fit their needs. Whether it's a minor change or a totally new, different design, allow users to make global changes when they need to, and exempt certain pages or elements from those changes, as well. Size matters Make sure your program is fully scalable, and will meet the needs community builders large and small. If your software has been successfully used to build communities with thousands of members as well as ones with under a hundred, you can rightfully claim expertise with scalability. If you have attained that scalability with a program that doesn't bog down and maintains good throughput, all the better. You can make very good selling points with both of these facts, scalability and efficiency. There is much more to consider, of course, and this article is meant to motivate more in-depth thought, research and analysis on your part. You have to consider languages and text tools, the underlying chat technologies, browser compatibility issues, user sophistication or lack thereof, support details, the design of your accompanying ("Free!") site and page templates, etc. Just remember to consider features in terms of the benefits your software users, and then their site users, will be looking for. If you "look through" the level of your users and understand what they are trying to offer their community members, you will be much more "on target" with the product you develop.
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