This blog reminds me of why I've overlooked a lot of new technologies. Most people miss the relevance of new things because they don't understand the technology, but sometimes too much background can work against you as well.
Browsers: Browsers didn't seem like a big deal to me when the first hit the scene. Ok, yeah, so you download a file over a network and display it in a client program. Ok, so it has a markup language. Ok, there's a way to send commands (cgi) to influence which file is sent. Nothing new so far.
Blogs: OK, RSS is cool, but what else is new here? It's a way to post to a website, right?
Facebook: Ok, so you can search a bunch of web pages and create connections. Sounds nice. Didn't those guys from "the globe" fail at this during the first boom?
Humans: Ok, you have an idea for a really smart primate.? They use tools? Ok, you mean like using a twig to eat ants. Oh, they make tools, you mean like a crow? I just don't see where you're going with this ;)
What this doesn't state, what really matters, is that if you're going to do something that's been done already you NEED something that makes your service unique. If you're pulling a Zooomr and just copying a feature list then you SHOULD listen to "Hasn't somebody done that already?" as much as you can, and learn to innovate at least slightly.
My old boss used to have a long and very well-delivered spiel on the history of the wheel (literally) and its continual reinvention. One good way to make the point.
Plus by reinventing, you get to own your work, you learn the problem space, you develop processes for execution, you train your team, you start collecting valuable usage data, you position yourself in the market... and all those reasons are on top of the fact that you can probably make some kick-ass improvements.
This is true but you have to differentiate yourself from the incumbents pretty significantly to gain any traction. A YouTube clone isn't going to get anywhere, but a video sharing site that managed to solve a major problem of YouTube might.
Facebook first became popular by managing to be less tacky than MySpace. It has since caught up and we now know better than to trust a social networking site to show anything like dignity.
We all say this, and it feels like it should be true. And yet I am constantly making use of various "YouTube clones". Google Video. Vimeo. Fora.TV. Whatever TED is using. uStream. Omnisio. And that's just the ones I can remember from the last couple of weeks.
Of course, it's somewhat unfair to claim that all of these sites are "YouTube clones", because each one is different from YouTube in some subtle way (e.g. some of them emphasize livestreaming). Which is, of course, the point. No child is ever quite the same as the parent. That's how you can start out with jellyfish and end up with stockbrokers.
Are these sites "getting anywhere"? Who knows? I'm guessing that many of them aren't profitable, but how profitable is YouTube itself? What really matters is whether your site is useful enough, and inexpensive enough, to stay open. Amoebas don't have to be as large as elephants, as smart as dolphins, or as sturdy as trees in order to coexist with them -- they just need water, food, and a modest amount of heat.
Do I really need to be as popular as YouTube (even in a different market) to be a success? Maybe this is what you meant by "different standards of 'getting somewhere.'" In many arenae, there is some company that has a massive, massive chunk of the user base tied up. You don't have to displace them, if you want to make a similar (but different!) app. You just have to get enough going to make some money, yes?
This doesn't only apply to services by the way. Virtual machines in some form or another were around for about 40 years before the gained the traction they did. MULTICS supported virtual memory for individual processes in the 60s, and it wasn't until the 80s until that became popular again.
Ditto for thin clients and programming languages. Good technology won't always catch on and if you really believe that something is superior you will have to spend a lot of time convincing people of that.
Virtual machines have always been popular in mainframes. It's only minis and micros that didn't have them until recently. Minis had virtual memory from the beginning and mainframes had it before minis became popular.
This is what my startup is all about. The idea is proven and I am just there to take a piece of the pie. The industry leaders said the market was tapped out, there was no more room and thats when I decided I needed to become a player in their game.
There always is more room, but you have to come with something unique, innovative that makes you better than the rest.
We're in the same position. Hopefully, we have that something. The users will decide.
It is always better to get into a market that has significant consumer interest and fight for market share, than to get into a market that consumers don't care about and fight to convince people to change their minds.
The author must had some success as he completely ignores how many google-wanna-bes are out there two or three years ago, and then the YouTube-wanna-bes, the Digg-wanna-bes ... There are always tons of dead-bodies in the wanna-bes.
I think the key is to avoid the "hot" wanna-be market. Google got into search when it's not hot. So is YouTube, java, digg ...
Search was NOT hot when Google came out. Lots of SMART people were convinced that you couldn't build a huge business on search and that the real money was in personalized home pages (portals).
Browsers: Browsers didn't seem like a big deal to me when the first hit the scene. Ok, yeah, so you download a file over a network and display it in a client program. Ok, so it has a markup language. Ok, there's a way to send commands (cgi) to influence which file is sent. Nothing new so far.
Blogs: OK, RSS is cool, but what else is new here? It's a way to post to a website, right?
Facebook: Ok, so you can search a bunch of web pages and create connections. Sounds nice. Didn't those guys from "the globe" fail at this during the first boom?
Humans: Ok, you have an idea for a really smart primate.? They use tools? Ok, you mean like using a twig to eat ants. Oh, they make tools, you mean like a crow? I just don't see where you're going with this ;)
etc, etc. Gotta keep an open mind.