The social network space for online marketers is dominated by two major players, Warrior forum and Blackhatworld. As the names might suggest, these communities do not present themselves as warm and caring spaces but are instead all about doing the best deals, often at any cost. This is not to say that there aren’t helpful individuals participating or that the content is universally suspect, but rather that the pervasive attitude amongst users is one of “trust no one and test everything twice before use”. As anybody with an entrepreneurial background would know, this type of environment is massively inefficient and would necessitate the introduction of checks that go beyond standard due diligence. One quick test yielded a time to implementation for an SEO technique at three times what it would have been had the information come from a different source.

The primary concerns for users of the two incumbents (as well as other smaller players) can be divided into three areas of concern:

• The powers that be: Though both incumbents can do more to protect users, Warrior Forum has a specifically bad reputation in this regard with moderators often acting in their own interests and to the detriment of users.
• Product quality: There are countless cases of people using both networks as their primary sales tool, often with dubious products aimed at new users. A typical example would be the all singing all dancing zero to hero course in becoming an online marketer, which when completed is shown to yield nothing but information freely available on the web. You can see examples here.
• Scam artists: Do a Google search on scams in this niche and you will find no end of examples. What makes this all the more telling is that the people being scammed are investing their own money in new business ventures, meaning that scams are often quite complex. One of the main reasons scammers can get away with these tricks is that it is relatively easy to manufacture trust in the absence of a proper trust framework, often through the use of multiple alternate accounts and a VPN.

It is clear from the above that all these concerns can be addressed by the inclusion of a robust trust framework and being cognisant of the veil of ignorance during design choices. One major shortcoming for operators in this niche, which does not relate to trust though, is viewer retention. This specifically relates to users leaving the site while still working on their projects because the needed tools are elsewhere. This includes secure messaging, ancillary services, A B split testing, buying hosting services and whole host of other issues. Of these, only ancillary services have been addressed by Warrior Forum and Blackhatworld and then only in as much as sub forums have been opened to allow for members to provide said services to each other. On this front Blackhatworld does marginally better as all services are verified. Yet, the potential value add of locking users into the network’s ecosystem remains largely untapped for both incumbents.