As part of my research for our new online community I have read through a pile of reports, many from Forrester. I have read them with mixed emotions.

Some show great insight and Forrester are very good at structuring phenomena in the world of social networking sites. But sometimes you cannot help yourself from giggling and thinking of how true old sayings still are. Like “experts often discover things that ordinary people have known for ages”.

Savor this one from a Forrester report called Organic Branding: “People don’t form and interact with communities in order to support a company. They do it to serve their own emotional needs”.

What great insight! Such revolutionary thinking! Such gobbledygook! What an astounding example of discovering the obvious. Obvious to anybody who is a believer in true marketing orientation, that is. For oldies who still believe in product or production orientation it might be news. But to anyone claiming to be marketing oriented this insight should flow through your veins: People don’t buy your stuff for your sake, but for their own sake. Or, people don’t browse around your website or community because it’s so brilliantly designed or has such a cool function. They do it because there’s something in it for them.

There’s a nice twist to that as well: the true marketing minded and the usability apostles have very, very much in common.

Social Networking Sites are about to finally tilt the scale in favor of true marketing orientation. The immediate feedback and widely distributed opinions by customers and real people from real life in communities has given the marketing orientation advocates ammunition of a kind they have never ever had before.

Now, you can force product development to listen to the wishes of customers, as it is expressed and distributed in the blogosphere. The repercussions of attitudes, training and empowerment of front line staff are so much more direct and visible that there are no more arguments against taking good care of your customer service staff.

Unhappy users are transformed from anonymous statistics of brand defections to angry bloggers who make their voice heard and their dissatisfaction is widely and rapidly distributed.

So, as a passionate advocate of the power of the customer and the end user, I vow that our social networking site will be transparent and extremely user centric. And if we stumble at any time, please let me know and remind me of this (pompous) promise.

There I was in a cab, with a good job and fair pay, still thinking: “wouldn’t it be just great to work for myself and not for others?”.

Ideas like that had popped up regularly for a couple of years. I even had a business plan pretty ready when my employer was acquired by a really big corporation and my dayjob turned more interesting again. The problem with all previous ideas had been that they were based on consultancy services – just like my present job – and that means, of course, that what you earn is directly related to how many hours you work. Does that sound like fun to you? I mean, should working for yourself just mean working your ass off for just as many hours that you are working your ass off today? Except that the doe would go into your own pocket, of course. No, there must be something better to do.

So there I was in the cab, changing my mind-set to conceiving a business concept that was not directly related to how many hours I bill. (Yes, I do understand that starting your own business isn’t done in an afternoon. It takes great efforts and many hours. But my hook was to avoid hinging the long term turn-over to hours worked on a continuous basis).

Another thing to keep in mind is that I have a good life today, with a family I love and a house I own (small loans, too). I don’t want to risk all that. So the concept had to be something that you can start on the side, without too great a risk and without upsetting your employer too much.

Ten minutes later, the core concept was ready.

You see, I’m not one of those very young start-up upstarts (witty, hey?). I’ve been in business for a while. But the point is that I often beat the kids when it comes to being creative, identifying trends and thinking up new concepts. Some five years ago, at a seminar in trend spotting, I claimed that social web functionality would be a main trend in the years to come. (I don’t pretend to have been the guy inventing that particular expression, but I did see it coming.)

So, the idea is about building a new web community to fill a gap that we think is waiting to be filled. When I mentioned the idea to some close friends and colleagues they all said: “Yeah, you’ve got something there. I haven’t seen anyone doing just this. Maybe bits and pieces of it, but not in this combination. It would be really great to be able to do just that.” And as with all social networks, their value to the members increases with the number of members. Which means that if you do it well enough and get members enough, you can hope being able to make some money from displaying Google Ads.

Oh, no! Not a nother web community, you say. Of course, I wouldn’t want to open just one more of the same as all the others. This is different of course. But I can’t tell you just how it is different. Not yet. I don’t want to give anything away so someone else could do a rip-off.

I thought it could be interesting for others to get some insight into the ins and outs and birth pains of a new web project. That’s why I start this blog. Since this is my first start-up, you might find a bit of tooing and froing, but that’s supposed to be part of the fun – for you that is. For me and my band of brothers (and sisters) it might be a bit painful. If you have any ideas on how to relieve that pain, you’re more than welcome to pass on some wisdom by commenting.