Guy Kawasaki has an interesting list of stupid ways to slow down adoption of your product. For social networking software, forcing users to re-type all their contact's emails is a big mistake (#8 on his list).
Many startups spend months creating a product in isolation, then roll out a website and anxiously wait for traffic. A better way is to start blogging about your functional area in advance, then create a website describing your product's features. As users visit, you have the chance to learn what features they want and to gather their emails onto your product announcement list. The result is eager beta users, customer-driven software and a big headstart on your Search Engine Optimization. This discussion talks about this approach.
Google Analytics lets you track website visitors to determine conversion rates and what pages cause many people to leave the site. However, manually testing and tracking different content on those pages is a pain. Google's Website Optimizer is now in beta, it lets you setup controlled experiments to test various versions of your pages (or sections of your pages). The FAQ does a good job of explaining how it works.
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