I was recently reading a blog by Andrew Chen where he makes reference to Public versus Private spaces. He wrote…
Public versus private spaces
One of the most important concepts in product design for social apps is public versus private spaces… Ultimately, the tradeoff is the following:
Private spaces are better for scaling across different demographics long-term, since it keeps different audiences segmented from each other. The downside is that you need to conquer the critical mass problem over-and-over again
Public spaces are better for getting to critical mass once, and generating fun. But the downside is that if you randomly get a bunch of Portuguese-speaking members, then your entire site might become known as “that Brazilian social network”
Ideally, you’d like to do all private spaces, but the downside is that it’s very hard to get momentum going. But if you win, then you win big, since it’s likely your product will be adopted by a very horizontal audience.
These concepts are very relevant to Rjenda.com as well. We started Rjenda on the assumptions that
- Busy individuals are a part of several private and public groups
- They communicate, share and interact with each of these groups differently
- They spend a considerable amount of time coordinating everyday activities for all their groups and friends
All of this requires strong support for “private spaces”, which we have.
Several of our users told us that they are a part of 8-10 very active groups in their daily lives – home, extended family, friends, school classrooms, sport teams, volunteer committee, book clubs, high school friends, and more. They communicate and share differently with each of these groups, and so wanted a solution that gave them the flexibility and simplicity to do that for each group, yet in one place.
While Rjenda.com has been in private beta for just a few weeks, we are seeing that our users are members of many more private groups compared to public groups. These users have initiated several private conversation streams simultaneously and yet can see and manage all in one convenient place.
Such private groups build a level of stickiness which is harder to get from the larger, impersonal public groups.
Rjenda provides such a place, designed as a “private” space for its users.
