Insane User Engagement

The strongest factor in determining whether a company has a staying power is its ‘user engagement.’ A successful startup needs to be able to take a simple idea and craft a product that intrinsically resonates with users.

Facebook has shown that engagement – even more than monetization – it’s a paramount for social platforms. Facebook set the user-engagement bar high for competing social utilities: its users currently spend an average of 6 to 7 hours on the site each month. The majority of Facebook’s value comes from its engaged user base, not its revenues.

Google+ may have an impressive user base of 170 million, but this says nothing for the platform when coupled with its engagement rates, which are lagging behind competitors at a meager three minutes per user per month in January.

With so many companies in the social space competing for a slice of people’s time, user engagement is one of the most vital factors driving success, and it is indeed the biggest for any capitalist to invest.