When a competitor goes out of business or is acquired it's not uncommon to announce a "white knight" or "rescue program." It's a little more unusual to claim t

When a competitor goes out of business or is acquired it's not uncommon to announce a "white knight" or "rescue program." It's a little more unusual to claim that a number of larger competitors, several of whom appear to be growing more rapidly (at least in adding number of users if not %), are "dying platforms." Offering a migration to folks unhappy with a competitor and suggesting differentiating benefits that you offer no one can get unhappy with, it's called positioning. Characterizing more than a dozen of your competitors as "dying" seems like it will leave a bitter lingering aftertaste in both competitors and their customers. What's overlooked in Pearson's statement "We have nothing against our competitors - we're just playing to win," is that few markets are winner take all and competitors often have to cooperate to create a viable industry. If they had tried to own their niche and enabled bloggers to migrate who wanted their feature set I think they would have gotten 90% of the benefits, maybe more since it's not credible that they are "better than everyone else" which is what their chart graphics purport, and not laid the groundwork for long term negative feeling if they had left out the buzz generating "dying platform" characterization.