4 ms·

To me this sounds like Zynga just took an idea that was already out there, improved upon it, and executed the marketing/business side of things better than thei

by lee 16y ago

To me this sounds like Zynga just took an idea that was already out there, improved upon it, and executed the marketing/business side of things better than their competitors. The blatant art rip-off is evil, but the methodology of "taking something proven, and making it better" is not. Apple does this all the time, and I don't fault them for it. For the HN crowd who "can't find an idea for a startup", maybe this is a really good method of finding one. Look at what's successful out there, and emulate to make it better.

notahacker 16y ago
Ironically, Farm Town was once described as "myFarm married with Zynga's YoVille" But did Zynga initially improve upon Farm Town or simply attract more users through a multimillion pound ad budget? For the consumer market "copy what the cool kids are doing and market the hell out of it" is arguably an even more successful strategy than "take something proven and make it better"
Keyframe 16y ago
There is kind of a proverb related to business here, which loosely translated says something like: "In a street where there are several bakeries, it is wise to open up another bakery." edit: I remembered that I have heard another version, with a different take: "In a street where there are several bakeries, next business that will open up will be a bakery" - I actually like that one more.
- jashmenn 16y ago
  I like this. Can you give more information on the origins? E.g. in what country/language is this proverb? What's the original language text?
  - Keyframe 16y ago
    It's from Croatia (in Croatian). I have no ideas about its origin though.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - kluikens 16y ago
    Somewhat relatedly to the proverb, but you might enjoy the "Emergence" episode from RadioLab. It's one of my favorite episodes and if you skip ahead to 18:56, you'll hear about 28th St Flower Market in New York which serves as a prime example. But, I highly suggest you listen to the whole episode (hour long). http://www.radiolab.org/2007/aug/14/ http://www.radiolab.org/2007/aug/14/
- Andrew_Quentin 16y ago
  It is wiser however to open a bakery in a street where there are none but a bakery is needed.
  - Keyframe 16y ago
    Right, but this relates to a business venture where you can easily spot where there is a market. Thus, it is wiser to enter the market where you are sure there is one than breaking in new markets by yourself.
    - Andrew_Quentin 16y ago
      Well, it very much depends. If you are the new bakery guy in a street with three or four other bakers, you are entering a market of high competition. The other three bakers are competing perhaps at extreme levels already, whether through branding, building a loyal customer base by providing better customer service, better products, a nice environment, friendly bakers, and price certainly. Now, if you, the new kid on the block, enter this highly competitive market, you need to be extremely clever to be competing while not loosing money and, if so you manage to compete, they would probably copy you before they die themselves. If however you decide to take a little bit more time upfront and invest more effort to find a place where your service is needed and there is little competition, you'll be making healthy profits. That is why copying does not win in the long term and even the company in question has now had to start to make their own products.
      - Keyframe 16y ago
        Maybe, maybe not. It was not my assertion anyways, just a proverb I have heard. :)
  - chrischen 16y ago
    If there are no bakeries there, you might also ask yourself why that is. If there's a secret hidden market somewhere well the hard part isn't starting a business there, it's finding it!
  - 16y ago
- teamonkey 16y ago
  Starbucks was/is notorious for a similar policy.
  - chancho 16y ago
    On a street where there are several Startbucks, it's wise to open up another Starbucks?
    - prodigal_erik 16y ago
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cto45fWUdJI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cto45fWUdJI Last time I was in downtown Seattle, Westlake Center (a small shopping mall) had three. Upstairs, downstairs, and a standalone building, all within a couple minutes' walk of each other. It's probably for the best they've seen the need to close some stores, but I almost wish they weren't, just for the absurdity of it. http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-starbucks-opens-in-rest-room-of-existing-starb,560/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-starbucks-opens-in-rest...
- jwhitlark 16y ago
  Kinda like the old punchline: "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you."
  - johnrob 16y ago
    Great analogy, considering that it is often significantly easier to beat the competition ('you') than bring a new product to market ('the bear').
- larrywright 16y ago
  I seem to recall hearing once that this was how Subway determined whether a location was a good spot to put a restaurant. If there was a McDonald's, Burger King, etc nearby then they moved in. The logic was that if it was good enough for the big guys, it was good enough for them. I always thought it was a clever way to avoid paying for market research by piggybacking on someone else's.
bugschivers 16y ago
As someone who actually played farmville at least from quite early on, and the competitor that they copied, I can tell you that they didn't emulate, they copied EVERYTHING. The entire interface was identical, right down to the little people that depicted your sex, everything was identical, the layout, the images, the user interface, everything. I will give them a grudging credit for being able to copy everything with more style, but I have to say as a user it was very confusing to see a game, pitched as a NEW game, that was identical in every respect to the competitor. I have NEVER seen such blatant copying, and it was the same with many other games, they weren't "inspired by", they were image for image, ui for ui replicas. I did play Farmville for a while, but they just don't know how to make these games compelling, and I lost interest. I don't think that there is anything wrong with taking an idea and making it your own, but to take someone's work and copy it almost verbatim, that seems pretty low to me.
MartinCron 16y ago
It's classic second-mover advantage business. Not only do you know what works and what doesn't, you get the benefits that the technology is cheaper and easier and better now than it was years ago. I've often thought of all of the slow-moving entrenched companies that could just have everything taken out from under them by a good hungry team using modern tools and techniques. As long as you're not actively producing new legacy code, you should be able to catch up in terms of product sophistication pretty quickly. That's not to say one could build FarmVille in a regular weekend, it would have to be a 3-day weekend.
- Aetius 16y ago
  Try 3 months of weekends.

by lee 16y ago

notahacker 16y ago

Ironically, Farm Town was once described as "myFarm married with Zynga's YoVille" But did Zynga initially improve upon Farm Town or simply attract more users through a multimillion pound ad budget? For the consumer market "copy what the cool kids are doing and market the hell out of it" is arguably an even more successful strategy than "take something proven and make it better"

Keyframe 16y ago

There is kind of a proverb related to business here, which loosely translated says something like: "In a street where there are several bakeries, it is wise to open up another bakery." edit: I remembered that I have heard another version, with a different take: "In a street where there are several bakeries, next business that will open up will be a bakery" - I actually like that one more.

jashmenn 16y ago
I like this. Can you give more information on the origins? E.g. in what country/language is this proverb? What's the original language text?
- Keyframe 16y ago
  It's from Croatia (in Croatian). I have no ideas about its origin though.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- kluikens 16y ago
  Somewhat relatedly to the proverb, but you might enjoy the "Emergence" episode from RadioLab. It's one of my favorite episodes and if you skip ahead to 18:56, you'll hear about 28th St Flower Market in New York which serves as a prime example. But, I highly suggest you listen to the whole episode (hour long). http://www.radiolab.org/2007/aug/14/ http://www.radiolab.org/2007/aug/14/
Andrew_Quentin 16y ago
It is wiser however to open a bakery in a street where there are none but a bakery is needed.
- Keyframe 16y ago
  Right, but this relates to a business venture where you can easily spot where there is a market. Thus, it is wiser to enter the market where you are sure there is one than breaking in new markets by yourself.
  - Andrew_Quentin 16y ago
    Well, it very much depends. If you are the new bakery guy in a street with three or four other bakers, you are entering a market of high competition. The other three bakers are competing perhaps at extreme levels already, whether through branding, building a loyal customer base by providing better customer service, better products, a nice environment, friendly bakers, and price certainly. Now, if you, the new kid on the block, enter this highly competitive market, you need to be extremely clever to be competing while not loosing money and, if so you manage to compete, they would probably copy you before they die themselves. If however you decide to take a little bit more time upfront and invest more effort to find a place where your service is needed and there is little competition, you'll be making healthy profits. That is why copying does not win in the long term and even the company in question has now had to start to make their own products.
    - Keyframe 16y ago
      Maybe, maybe not. It was not my assertion anyways, just a proverb I have heard. :)
- chrischen 16y ago
  If there are no bakeries there, you might also ask yourself why that is. If there's a secret hidden market somewhere well the hard part isn't starting a business there, it's finding it!
- 16y ago
teamonkey 16y ago
Starbucks was/is notorious for a similar policy.
- chancho 16y ago
  On a street where there are several Startbucks, it's wise to open up another Starbucks?
  - prodigal_erik 16y ago
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cto45fWUdJI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cto45fWUdJI Last time I was in downtown Seattle, Westlake Center (a small shopping mall) had three. Upstairs, downstairs, and a standalone building, all within a couple minutes' walk of each other. It's probably for the best they've seen the need to close some stores, but I almost wish they weren't, just for the absurdity of it. http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-starbucks-opens-in-rest-room-of-existing-starb,560/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-starbucks-opens-in-rest...
jwhitlark 16y ago
Kinda like the old punchline: "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you."
- johnrob 16y ago
  Great analogy, considering that it is often significantly easier to beat the competition ('you') than bring a new product to market ('the bear').
larrywright 16y ago
I seem to recall hearing once that this was how Subway determined whether a location was a good spot to put a restaurant. If there was a McDonald's, Burger King, etc nearby then they moved in. The logic was that if it was good enough for the big guys, it was good enough for them. I always thought it was a clever way to avoid paying for market research by piggybacking on someone else's.

bugschivers 16y ago

As someone who actually played farmville at least from quite early on, and the competitor that they copied, I can tell you that they didn't emulate, they copied EVERYTHING. The entire interface was identical, right down to the little people that depicted your sex, everything was identical, the layout, the images, the user interface, everything. I will give them a grudging credit for being able to copy everything with more style, but I have to say as a user it was very confusing to see a game, pitched as a NEW game, that was identical in every respect to the competitor. I have NEVER seen such blatant copying, and it was the same with many other games, they weren't "inspired by", they were image for image, ui for ui replicas. I did play Farmville for a while, but they just don't know how to make these games compelling, and I lost interest. I don't think that there is anything wrong with taking an idea and making it your own, but to take someone's work and copy it almost verbatim, that seems pretty low to me.

MartinCron 16y ago

It's classic second-mover advantage business. Not only do you know what works and what doesn't, you get the benefits that the technology is cheaper and easier and better now than it was years ago. I've often thought of all of the slow-moving entrenched companies that could just have everything taken out from under them by a good hungry team using modern tools and techniques. As long as you're not actively producing new legacy code, you should be able to catch up in terms of product sophistication pretty quickly. That's not to say one could build FarmVille in a regular weekend, it would have to be a 3-day weekend.

Aetius 16y ago
Try 3 months of weekends.