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Slack is a kind of a white fly or an exception if you see the bigger picture because it's in a segment that targets the devs community, which is very attentive

by MrBra 9y ago

Slack is a kind of a white fly or an exception if you see the bigger picture because it's in a segment that targets the devs community, which is very attentive and careful about the product they choose, because have the skills to decide about it. But what would happen with a product targeting a more generic public (non only tech savvy people), like a new sharing economy app or a new innovative social network? What I am trying to say is... the big players are now so big that they are just going to integrate any IT idea that is cool and profitable, in no time. This is what saddens me. We are not in early 2000 anymore, got a concept around manipulating pictures? Yay, make a website and give it a beta badge icon and there you go, you got popular and people are interested in investing in you! Nowadays? Go develop your new picture filters, meanwhile google engineers will publish a blog post where they talk about how their machine learning libs powered by 11230021 GPUs has got better result in that aspect and they will now integrate that capability in all Google pic manipulating products. Do you get what I am saying?

cjCamel 9y ago
Sure I do - Facebook has brazenly added Snapchat features to Messenger and Whatsapp and have undoubtedly clipped the wings of Snap Inc, at least for now. But before Facebook did this Snap demonstrated that it's still possible to ladder up (https://stratechery.com/2016/snapchats-ladder/ https://stratechery.com/2016/snapchats-ladder/) from an initially seemingly easily copy-able idea into something meaningful - the reason why Facebook didn't copy Snapchat initially was because they didn't get it, and didn't see the threat until it was nearly too late. There are new social network startups being developed every day, but the reason they don't succeed isn't because Google copy them - it's because they are trying to copy Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/AirBnB/Uber, not the other way round. Or because they suck. Like I said before - if you develop your idea and the worst that happens is that Facebook copies it, then that's actually a really cool outcome, as by then you've probably done extremely well. The more likely outcome, as I suspect you well know, is that it is ignored by everyone apart from your closest friends. p.s. Here's another Ben Thompson article about the Facebook monopoly. The real reason FB is a problem is because they own the digital representation of our real relationships, and no startup is going to be able to compete with that https://stratechery.com/2017/facebook-and-the-cost-of-monopoly/ https://stratechery.com/2017/facebook-and-the-cost-of-monopo... Btw, I know plenty of non technical people and teams that use Slack.
- MrBra 9y ago
  > if you develop your idea and the worst that happens is that Facebook copies it, then that's actually a really cool outcome, as by then you've probably done extremely well. So you don't think that the amount of time before big players copy you has shortened, nowadays? Don't you think they are more flexible, agile, open, nowadays? Of course they are... I agree with you that by the time that this happens it means that you have done a lot well already... but yeah... one time you could actually dream about "making the next new big thing", now you can only hope about being copied/acquired as late as possible... Am I wrong?

by MrBra 9y ago

cjCamel 9y ago

Sure I do - Facebook has brazenly added Snapchat features to Messenger and Whatsapp and have undoubtedly clipped the wings of Snap Inc, at least for now. But before Facebook did this Snap demonstrated that it's still possible to ladder up (https://stratechery.com/2016/snapchats-ladder/ https://stratechery.com/2016/snapchats-ladder/) from an initially seemingly easily copy-able idea into something meaningful - the reason why Facebook didn't copy Snapchat initially was because they didn't get it, and didn't see the threat until it was nearly too late. There are new social network startups being developed every day, but the reason they don't succeed isn't because Google copy them - it's because they are trying to copy Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/AirBnB/Uber, not the other way round. Or because they suck. Like I said before - if you develop your idea and the worst that happens is that Facebook copies it, then that's actually a really cool outcome, as by then you've probably done extremely well. The more likely outcome, as I suspect you well know, is that it is ignored by everyone apart from your closest friends. p.s. Here's another Ben Thompson article about the Facebook monopoly. The real reason FB is a problem is because they own the digital representation of our real relationships, and no startup is going to be able to compete with that https://stratechery.com/2017/facebook-and-the-cost-of-monopoly/ https://stratechery.com/2017/facebook-and-the-cost-of-monopo... Btw, I know plenty of non technical people and teams that use Slack.

MrBra 9y ago
> if you develop your idea and the worst that happens is that Facebook copies it, then that's actually a really cool outcome, as by then you've probably done extremely well. So you don't think that the amount of time before big players copy you has shortened, nowadays? Don't you think they are more flexible, agile, open, nowadays? Of course they are... I agree with you that by the time that this happens it means that you have done a lot well already... but yeah... one time you could actually dream about "making the next new big thing", now you can only hope about being copied/acquired as late as possible... Am I wrong?