Community Takes All: The Power of Social+

No category is really won until the social product is built.

A social+ product typically has both an interaction layer and a transaction layer. The interaction layer appeals to a user’s emotional and cognitive side, while the transaction layer is more functional and rational. From a product and marketing perspective, combining those two distinct tasks into a coherent experience can be a delicate balancing ac... See more

Any product that has a social component baked in has fundamental and asymmetric advantages over competing non-social products in that category: better growth loops, better engagement, better retention, better defensibility.

Spotify is great, but it’s primarily a single-player experience. Music, on the other hand, is an inherently social experience. Tiktok—originally, musical.ly—figured out how to make music social by licensing music, introducing viral “challenges,” and making user-generated content easier to create, even if they didn’t technically build a social graph... See more

Peer-to-peer social engagement is baked into the product itself. Social+ products feature authentic engagement between the users in the network, not just with a single curator or creator.

Social+ companies have a unique and proprietary social graph that is purpose-built for that product. But if a social graph is purpose-built for your product or experience, then you’re building something special and defensible.

There’s one rule of thumb that’s proven true over and over again: the best version of every consumer product is the one that’s intrinsically social.