Ever ponder why Black Friday, Facebook, and Twitter are so successful? Want to duplicate the same feat with your startup or your venture? Just follow these 3 keys to success, and I’m sure you’ll have VC‘s and angel’s knocking at your door. Duplicate the 3 keys, no need to re-invent the wheel!

Step 3 – Go Mainstream

Well that goes without saying. If Black Friday wasn’t the term commonly known as the day after Thanksgiving, it wouldn’t be mainstream. Once it reached this level, it became quite apparent that to be in retail, you had to honor the Friday after Thanksgiving.

Facebook would not have survived as a college only social network. Once you are out of college, you are in the mainstream. To have been stubborn and not open to new ideas, it would have remained a small niche social network that, gasp – MySpace might have buried!

Twitter in 2006, 2007 was yet to reach mainstream. Once it clicked or resonated with the masses at SXSW 2007, it was off and running to the mainstream.

Step 2 – Get people talking about “it“

Whatever “it” is, you need people talking about “it“. If you don’t have the people buzzing about “it“, you won’t ever reach step 3 which as you just read is the mainstream.

For Black Friday, that mainstream was when the media picked up on all the sales post Thanksgiving and dubbed it by it’s common known name. Yes, Black Friday not only leveraged the media into believing the name it gave itself, it lent the tip to media to help spread the word of the “it” which of course is Black Friday.

Facebook became the “it” by simply being the “in” place to be first as a college only site, and by holding off the next level it pushed the anticipation of “it” by opening up the site to anyone. Once that happened, it quickly surged into the mainstream.

Twitter had a more difficult time since it wasn’t your classic social network. It was something new, but so new that it could never put it’s finger on”it“. Once it figured out that “it” was actually step #1 below, it quickly leveraged “it” to make a run to the mainstream quicker than either Black Friday or Facebook did.

Step 1 You follow therefore you become a follower

Black Friday would never have had the success it currently enjoys unless there were people seriously following the run up hype to the Friday after Thanksgiving. Retailers now even open on Thanksgiving morning since the hype (look for a new media dubbed name soon for the morning of Thanksgiving sales!) is so big for Black Friday. By hype, I mean lines of people (followers) that maybe won’t buy a thing unless they are tempted with super sales that the date offers. They still might not buy any item, but will be highly tempted by all the accompanying hype, so chances are they will spend some money.

Facebook would have never had the success without opening up and loading up their user base. Once they figured out that you hooked ‘em in college, but now most of their users were post college days, they needed to open it up so that their mainstream friends could connect. Once they did that, the next 2 steps were easier to achieve and success followed up quickly.

With Twitter this first step was more crucial since no one had a clue what Twitter was or how it was going to work. Twitter is/was almost like how this post started out. It had no idea where it was going, but figured that out when step #1 magically took off on it’s own. Once that happened, the powers that be at Twitter realized that it’s true calling was the followers that propelled it to be the darlings of water cooler chat, and then talk shows. It had “it” to talk about, even though “it” was still an unknown, but talking about “it” via the crucial follower step #1 helped it reach mainstream faster than Black Friday or Facebook.

Technically Speaking, if you gain some followers who talk about “it“, you’ll reach the final step in the 3 keys to success which is mainstream acceptance. If you want to put that in your pitch to VC’s and angel’s, tell ‘em you read it here first! Oh, btw, Happy Safe Thanksgiving to all!

Related articles

• Black Friday Deals 2010: 7 Ways To Use Social Media To Score At Sales (huffingtonpost.com)
• Use these apps and save big on Black Friday deals (en.onsoftware.com)
• 10 Social Media Deals to Check In to on Black Friday (mashable.com)
• CyberMonday2010.com is Here! (bradsdeals.com)
• AMD Twitter Contest Goes Live; Along With Some Killer Black Friday Deals (geardiary.com)
• Getting The Jump On Black Friday Deals With These Sites & Mobile Apps (makeuseof.com)

Friends On Fire, the new Facebook app that launched earlier today based off of the Yahoo! Fire Eagle. Along with the official Yahoo! blog post, there was really good coverage of the new app.

In addition to Friends on Fire, we’re also launching a new way to update Fire Eagle — a Firefox extension that adds a button to your toolbar. With one click, your location is instantly shared with your trusted friends on your favorite services.

I haven’t had time to try the Firefox Fire Eagle extension yet, as it’s been a busy Friday – wanted to write this post hours ago! Glad it was well covered.

Of course, if you’re out and about, you’re not necessarily going to be hauling around your computer with you. Instead, you’ll want to grab one of the mobile Fire Eagle updaters from Yahoo’s Gallery. These apps include simple mobile updaters like Fire Fone for the iPhone as well as more robust social networking apps like Brightkite.

I haven’t tried the mobile yet either. Now here is one thing that did come up in discussion in a call I had earlier today. There are a lot of 35 and older people online. In fact, here is a thought for you – most people that age and older would rather have a hidemenow.com function vs a “Here I am! Here I am!” mobile all the time find me everywhere network. Not saying there is failure here, but basically – you are not 23 years old forever is all I’m saying!

While Foursquare and Whrrl may have a good time this weekend at SXSW, how will it translate into the real outside of SXSW coming in the following weeks.

Just in time for SXSW, Dennis Crowley, one of the original developers of Dodgeball, has released a new location-aware social app (iTunes link) for the iPhone: Foursquare.

One of the main issues of Foursquare that I see out of the box is limited support or limited areas as described.

The app currently features a database for 12 of the larger metropolitan areas in the U.S., including Boston, New York, San Francisco, LA, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, and Austin. We expect that Foursquare will add data for more cities in the next few months. If a certain restaurant or bar is not in Foursquare’s database, you can also add your own.

Like I said – after Austin and SXSW this week – what about the real world post SXSW?

Whrrl, I just never found it easy or fun. Maybe that has changed in the 2.0 version as outlined in this post, but still what about Loopt?

You’ve got options when it comes to iPhone apps designed to help you capture moments in time, but the Whrrl v2.0 iPhone app hopes to help you combine photos, stories, and your location with the photos and stories of your friends for a collective storytelling experience.

While there is even more written about Yahoo! and Fire Eagle, and Friends On Fire.

Despite the hype they get, location-based services have yet to catch on in the mainstream.

That above quote is the main issue of location based social nets in one sentence.

Of the two, Friends on Fire for Facebook is the more consumer-friendly.

This above quote sums up Friends On Fire for Facebook. It is quite easy to use, and yes, I signed up as shown by this picture below.

Technically Speaking, there are just as many 35+ age people online and technology savvy as I already stated above that would rather have some startup come up with the hidemequicknow.com vs the find me here! Find me NOW! COME HUG me TODAY! social networks of today. It’s not at all a fail, but a miscalculation of mainstream appeal. For complete coverage inside of SXSW – check out Rizzn unleashed, on twitter @rizzn, as well as posts that he will be putting up on siliconANGLE.

Twitter has been on steroids over the past few weeks. Interesting enough, it was about 2 years ago right before SXSW that twitter fully took off. I hadn’t even signed up for an account until right about the time before SXSW 2 years ago. Interestingly enough, as seen by the below tweets by @marshallk and locally here in the STL @weatherbird we see the full power of twitter.

The hardest thing now is like it was the days before e-mail went mainstream. That is convincing the non-twitter users to grab their own twitter account soon. Before long, there will be people that will not be able to have the name they want. Trying to get someone to use twitter shouldn’t be hard since ABC News appears to be fully plugged into twitter, and even the Weatherbird from STLToday is plugged in.

It shouldn’t be hard to get people to use twitter, but there are some people that feel it’s still not mainstream enough. If ABC News can use it, I think it is really close being mainstream!

Technically Speaking, I’m not watching the speech, just following along via twitter in tweetdeck is fine by me.