4 ms·

This is badly, badly, mistaken. (a) You don't get buzz just by getting something out there. Usually, nobody cares when you launch, no matter how cool your ide

by wheels 17y ago

This is badly, badly, mistaken. (a) You don't get buzz just by getting something out there. Usually, nobody cares when you launch, no matter how cool your idea is. What you were seeing was either effective PR or dumb luck, neither of which can be duplicated trivially. (b) One friggin week advantage is nothing. Usually the first player in a space takes it in the shins. It's so exceedingly rare for a first mover to win that calling it an advantage seems to ignore market realities.

antileet 17y ago
Thanks for your advice. I never saw it this way. Maybe I didn't give enough details in my original post. This was a little hack that I thought would be cool, and would help me learn how to write comet-based apps (which it did). When Omegle came out, was a little annoyed but since our project was a few days of work, I put the code away and focused on my main project. I didn't even hear of omegle again after then until a few weeks after that. But still, my current project is chasing a first mover with a few months' head start and it's nice to get reaffirmation that we don't need to be first movers to get ahead. P.S. If you're interested, here are slides from a presentation we gave in our local startup interaction session: http://www.slideshare.net/guest3cff7f/connr http://www.slideshare.net/guest3cff7f/connr
encoderer 17y ago
I'm fond of the saying... the pioneers get the arrows, the settlers get the land.
jacquesm 17y ago
What a waste man, I've never even heard of omegle. Keep that in mind please. In spite of whatever the buzz is today, except for the top 10 sites or so the majority of websites have not been visited yet by the majority of the people on the planet. There definitely is room for more than one in almost every space except for social networks that are 'feature comparable', sooner or later one will gain the momentum and crowd the other one out.
- gridspy 17y ago
  Also, remember that you are _way more aware_ of your space than the typical person. Every day you are reading as much as you can in your area, so the chance of stumbling on a competitor is much larger for you than for your potential customers. As a startup, don't assume that all your customers just read the great PR on your competitor. Most of them probably don't know that they want random chat (or live power monitoring)

by wheels 17y ago

antileet 17y ago

Thanks for your advice. I never saw it this way. Maybe I didn't give enough details in my original post. This was a little hack that I thought would be cool, and would help me learn how to write comet-based apps (which it did). When Omegle came out, was a little annoyed but since our project was a few days of work, I put the code away and focused on my main project. I didn't even hear of omegle again after then until a few weeks after that. But still, my current project is chasing a first mover with a few months' head start and it's nice to get reaffirmation that we don't need to be first movers to get ahead. P.S. If you're interested, here are slides from a presentation we gave in our local startup interaction session: http://www.slideshare.net/guest3cff7f/connr http://www.slideshare.net/guest3cff7f/connr

encoderer 17y ago

I'm fond of the saying... the pioneers get the arrows, the settlers get the land.

jacquesm 17y ago

What a waste man, I've never even heard of omegle. Keep that in mind please. In spite of whatever the buzz is today, except for the top 10 sites or so the majority of websites have not been visited yet by the majority of the people on the planet. There definitely is room for more than one in almost every space except for social networks that are 'feature comparable', sooner or later one will gain the momentum and crowd the other one out.

gridspy 17y ago
Also, remember that you are _way more aware_ of your space than the typical person. Every day you are reading as much as you can in your area, so the chance of stumbling on a competitor is much larger for you than for your potential customers. As a startup, don't assume that all your customers just read the great PR on your competitor. Most of them probably don't know that they want random chat (or live power monitoring)