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Lifecycle Of An Idea
By Daya Baran at July 11, 2008 0 Comments
Many companies are rolling out products that let their employees and customers post, vote on, and discuss ideas with each other. One such product is SalesForce.com’s Ideas which lets enables SalesForce’s customers built communities for their users. Here is their observation on the lifecycle of an idea. Essentially there are three stages to an idea.
Disruptive Shift
Often times companies want to figure out how to make a disruptive shift and raise the baseline. There might be a new feature which improves the stickiness or viral nature of the site, but better yet, think about what new communities you might be able to create? Is there a different audience you can tap into or a new conversation you can spark.
Steady Growth
Over time the community will settle into a steady state, which is perfectly natural. It’s hard to keep up the launch momentum. For example on the IdeaExchange today we got 10 new ideas and 30 comments which is well off our peak but still a healthy stream of innovation.
Slow Death
If you continue to market the community and deliver on ideas you should see steady growth. After all you’re content is growing as are your registered users. On the flip side if you neglect your community and appears that no one is listening you will probably see traffic die off.
Labels: lifecycle, online communities
