Every start-up company that is creating a consumer-focused business is using Facebook and Twitter as channels to acquire users.  This should be no surprise given the access to massive amount of users, but the ultimate fallacy behind building the “push to X social network feature” is just because you add a “Share to X” button on your app/site doesn’t necessarily mean: (1) users on your site will click on the button and share the content and (2) friends of those users on X will click on the link that you’re passing along with the content .

In the case of #1, the real questions consumer product managers need to answer are:

• Do people want to share what you WANT them to share?
• Is the content you want them to share interesting enough?
• How easy are you making it to share that content?
• Ultimately, do people really want to share what you want them to share?

In the case of #2, regarding driving traffic back to your app/site:

• What pieces of information did you post back to X social network?  Was it text-only? Do images help? What was the exact text? Did you update the status or update the news feed?
• If it was a news feed post, did you contain a picture with the post?  Was the post interesting enough?
• What was the Call-to-Action for the friend and was it compelling enough?

Most startups build their products based on the premise that they will acquire users based on leveraging these viral channels.  It seems so obvious, yet many of them fail, not because they haven’t optimized all techniques of the channel, but because fundamentally people don’t want to share what you WANT them to share.

I am not claiming that I have the answer to these questions, but I am claiming that as product managers, we’re focused on the wrong thing.  Rather than focusing on optimizing viral channels, using Facebook Connect, or what should the post look-like, we should first ask “Do people want to share my content?”  Just because you give the opportunity to share content back to Facebook, doesn’t mean they will.

So, as a product manager, in order to increase #1 and #2, we should ask the question, “What do people want to share and WHY do people want to share it?”