4 ms·
Why are so many people expecting this to be a "killer" when they have failed to gain much traction with their other attempts to compete with Facebook/Twitter. I
by larrykubin 16y ago
Why are so many people expecting this to be a "killer" when they have failed to gain much traction with their other attempts to compete with Facebook/Twitter. I don't know many people using Orkut, Wave, Buzz, Picasa, etc.
- c1sc0 16y agoWishful thinking? I know I want a Facebook "killer" to pop up soon. Network effects are what I hate & love most about the tech industry: why is it that something beautiful always has to be ruined once some player becomes big enough to dominate the space? PCs : Microsoft, Social Networking: Facebook, Mobile Apps: Apple
- tyng 16y agoWhat about Macs and Macbooks? they are making some serious progress over the last few years despite market domination by PCs for a long long time (almost everybody outside of design industry was using PCs). I think really great technology does eventually shine. To be fair though, iPod and iPhone did play a big role to give Apple the "coolness" as a whole, perhaps that's the right strategy - attack from the sidelines.
- riffraff 16y agoI would say macbooks are a point in favour of the previous poster. They made some serious progress by becoming intel machines, i.e. PCs.
- tyng 16y agoPerhaps a mixture of both. To me I made the switch when I got both an iPod and an iPhone so getting a Macbook was somewhat a natural next step when I needed to get a new laptop. Didn't care too much about what's inside the machine, the different OS experience was a major concern at the time though.
- pyre 16y ago* An Intel chip means that it's faster to run Windows (without the need for x86-on-PowerPC emulation). * An Intel chip means that I can run Linux on it and still have access to closed-source programs (Flash, Matlab, etc). * An Intel chip makes it possible to boot Windows natively. * An Intel chip makes it easier for Apple to maintain forward momentum without needing to goad Motorola/IBM/etc to improve their PowerPC offerings to be competitive with Intel/AMD chips.
- gaius 16y agoIt's not as simple as that - they are a hybrid. An interface as easy to use as the previous Macs, hardware as cheap as a PC, an underlying OS as powerful as Unix.
- rue 16y ago> Network effects are what I hate & love most about the tech industry: why is it that something beautiful always has to be ruined once some player becomes big enough to dominate the space? Well, that is definitely a good reason to wish that Google will take over social networking…
- nanairo 16y agoPersonally I am more worried of a big company dominating more than one space. Say, I'm happy with PS3 to beat Xbox 'cause Sony is not a threat anywhere else, but Microsoft got the Windows/Office monopolies. I am happy with Apple being strong in iPod/iPhone because they are weak in PCs. And I am happy with Google being strong in search, and Facebook and Twitter having the social network market. If we got a Facebook killer from Twitter I'd love it. But from Google? I think they got enough fingers in enough pies for the time being. :)
- avar 16y agoAt least Google has a policy of you owning your data, and of making it easy to grab all your data so you can move to other services. So if they ran something like Facebook it would be much easier to compete with them outside of their ecosystem, unlike Facebook which tries to dominate all data submitted into their system.
- nanairo 16y agoThat is a good point... though I really don't like either choice. :D
- froo 16y agoI suppose it's the machine gun way of thinking. If you fire enough bullets at something, you're bound to hit it. Same goes with Google releasing a bazillion products.
- seldo 16y agoAsk Yahoo how that worked out for them.
- jrockway 16y agoBut Google already has one successful product, which Yahoo didn't. It's more like MS. We all remember how badly Bob and those new phones failed. But they went from 0-to-success on the gaming console market, and they did it by capitalizing on their already-successful product ("Hey windows developers, click here to compile your existing game for xbox 360!")
- pavs 16y agoI think its fair to say google has more than one successful product.
- points 16y agoThey have one cashcow - adsense/adwords. What other Google products turn a profit?
- sz 16y agoAds are where their revenue comes from directly, but other products play a supporting role.
- pavs 16y agoAdsense is both a medium to generate profit from existing products and a successful product in its own right. Is YouTube, Gmail, Google Search, Android not successful? All these products has very large user adoption and Google is earning money with the help of adsense/doubleclick/AdMob.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- c00p3r 16y agoOrkut is popular in Asia and Latin America.