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The question:

As the developer of Facebook or Myspace, what would you have done to grow the website faster?

Forget Adsense, for example, and think outside the box. I'm truly interested in what unique, creative ways that today's young entrepreneurs, looking back, could have done better than the creators of such websites.

[truehearts46]

i think what will really click on those myspace and stuffs is for them to have LIVECHAT... it would be exciting, especially if you can chat with the friends of your friends!!!

[dfveteran]

Since those sites are mostly geared towards high school and college age people. I would say, pay students to promote the site by word of mouth. I would target various outside school and college activities with ad campaigns, flyers, emails.

I would also launch ad campaigns at every school or college related website across the world. Once the kids find out about new technology and ideas and approve of it, everyone else usually follows......Kinda weird, but young people usually set the trends nowadays.

[jawzishere]

If I were Myspace or Facebook I would go with dfveteran and work the offline angle. For example they could host a huge party at an event center and hire a bunch of local bands and make the admission free. At the party they could giveaway some big prizes to entice students to attend even further (ipods up to one year tuition scholarships) and of course would give away all kinds of free gear with their logo on it (It would have to be cool, trendy designs that kids would love to wear around) hats, shirts, sweaters, sweats, backpacks, satchels. They could also setup huge banks of computers along the side so that kids could go and create profiles and everything and test out the site.

If you did something like that in just a few areas with lots of high school and college kids the word of mouth advertising would spread your name across the nation like wildfire. In fact, if you came up with a new social networking site that was unique and had distinct advantages over Myspace and Facebook you might just be able to compete with them using a marketing strategy such as that.

[rlmedia]

And don't make the mistake of 95% design and 5% marketing, it's all great having a flashy project but if the POTENTIAL viewer doesn't get the chance to see it then there's no chance of making a profit.

Contest: Will there be money involved this, e.g to start up the business and running costs, etc?

[MrMegroni]

Hmmm!!

Well obviosly unique marketing tactics and incentives.

But the HOOK and meaning of both websites is offering individuality to the users. They want to feel like this is MYYYYYY website not yours but MINE. So flex the options and educate the users of how to personalize their site (music, backround, etc). Make it fun, Make it easy. From here, word of mouth at the lunch table takes over.

Myspace and Facebook didn't take action in this field on their own. Website designers and third-person parties had to tend to the crowd.

Evan