4 ms·
I strongly disagree especially in the case of social networks. First movers in such spaces have incredible advantages and one of them is a lock-in effect. Count
by csydas 9y ago
I strongly disagree especially in the case of social networks. First movers in such spaces have incredible advantages and one of them is a lock-in effect. Countless follow-up social sites have come and gone that either had feature parity or better offerings than Facebook, but failed to get a foothold because of the fact that everyone already had Facebook. Why switch when everyone can already talk and plan?
SV really isn't as much of a meritocracy as people like to pretend, as so many times just being first to the party and locking people in is enough to keep them there. I'm sure tons of businesses on exchange would love to ditch and move to Google Apps for Business, but the change is just too much of a hassle, even if the features are exactly as desired. Same for Google businesses looking at the MS office world with starry eyes.
The merit often has less to do with a product's success and continued success as much as how efficient they are at locking people in. Going back to Facebook, it's not like there's a way to migrate or exfiltrate your data in any meaningful way to another system.
This is an exaggerated comparison, but the mafia adds value much in the same way, in that often you don't have a choice in the matter. This isn't to say people are forced to use Facebook, but much like a mafia town, it's hard to do business otherwise.
- ameister14 9y ago>I strongly disagree especially in the case of social networks. First movers in such spaces have incredible advantages and one of them is a lock-in effect. Countless follow-up social sites have come and gone that either had feature parity or better offerings than Facebook, but failed to get a foothold because of the fact that everyone already had Facebook. Why switch when everyone can already talk and plan? Sure, and that applied to Friendster and Myspace and others as well, until Facebook came along.
- scott_s 9y agoI don't like the term "first mover", because in practice, I think it's rare for the actual first to win. Friendster was the first friend-oriented online social network. They were the first mover, but the site performed terribly. MySpace and Facebook beat Friendster because they were better at doing what people wanted. There are other examples. The iPhone was not the first smart phone, but it was better than all of the others when it came out. It dominated for a while, and even though it's no longer the dominant smart phone (I believe there are more Android phones), all smart phones are derivatives of that first iPhone. Google beat Yahoo and AltaVista. Historically, I think it's usually second-movers that win, because they tend to benefit from the first-movers defining the problem, and one of the second-movers solves it better.
- ExactoKnight 9y agoFacebook was first in getting real identity on the internet right. The other social media sites before them never understood this well -- many had visions of people taking on avatars of other creatures, or defining their life around one myopic interest (in the case of MySpace: music).
- aswanson 9y agoWhat do you think Twitter got right? I think real identity was a part of it, but fake identity abounds there as well.
- austenallred 9y agoIn the instance of social networks, when everybody is already using a product, that’s part of what makes it a better product. Facebook wasn’t the first mover, and no one forced you to stay there, but now that we’re all there it is much more difficult to create a product better than it.
- aswanson 9y agoYeah, it's like the end of an evolutionary branch. Slight mutations arent going to get you anything, you have to branch off in an orthogonal direction.
- Animats 9y agoFacebook wasn't a first mover. It was more like the tenth large social network. Predecessors included AOL, Myspace, Orkut, Geocities...
- ExactoKnight 9y agoIt was first mover in getting real identity on the internet right. Social network is not an accurate term for what made Facebook "right" over its competitors.
- ajoy 9y agoYou are right. I don't think there will be another social network like Facebook. But do not in any way assume facebook cannot be toppled. Already the younger generation is not using facebook as much. I have zero loyalty to the company and its product. But the next big social network or software that connects may not look anything like Facebook. It will be most likely be unrecognizable as a social network even.