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This did not hold up well, imo. Not sure how to count it but by some lists this is stuff like: Tencent, Alibaba, Amazon, Netflix, Priceline, Baidu, Salesforce.c

This did not hold up well, imo. Not sure how to count it but by some lists this is stuff like: Tencent, Alibaba, Amazon, Netflix, Priceline, Baidu, Salesforce.com, JD.com. Others would include Uber/Lyft, Airbnb, GitHub, ... There are only a few that would qualify that I can think of - Instagram, Snapchat, and WhatsApp. If folks here have other examples or thoughts on why this does or doesn't hold true would love to hear them.

airocker 7y ago
Uber/Lyft/AirBnb were considered toys when they began. It may be that nowadays the transition from toy to big company is faster.
- playpause 7y ago
  I don't remember anyone saying Uber/Lyft/Airbnb were toys when they began. Some might have thought them unlikely to succeed, but that's not the same thing as being a toy.
  - airocker 7y ago
    I do not think we are referring to Toy's literal meaning here. IMO, Toy here means something insignificant that a few people/small market uses.
    - Impossible 7y ago
      Exactly. Those of you that are hung up on toy meaning a literal toy or video game with no intrinsic value can replace the word toy with "gimmick" or "novelty" or even "a serious idea that won't scale" (http://paulgraham.com/ds.html http://paulgraham.com/ds.html). Early Air Bed and Breakfast charging people for couch surfing and selling Obama O's (https://www.airbnb.com/obamaos https://www.airbnb.com/obamaos) to fund their startup definitely feels toy like to me. I'd argue there are entire categories that are currently considered toys, but eventually with the right business model, tech improvements and cultural changes will make the serious billion dollar tech companies we have now look like toys.
      - basch 7y ago
        Toy vs Tool means novelty vs efficiency creator. A toy is fun to use it exists to be used for pleasure, a tool is useful and exists to make work easier. Toy should be used to mean superfluous bonus, unnecessary but enjoyable pastime.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
cpmsmith 7y ago
I think the "Thing" in Next Big Thing as this article uses it is rarely a business, more often a technology. WhatsApp has never been considered a toy, but IM as a medium has—WhatsApp's genesis as a valuable business is itself that toy becoming a Big Thing. Netflix was never a toy; streaming video was a toy in 2005, Netflix turned it into a billion dollar business. Edit: Technology, not product, and Netflix example
DoreenMichele 7y ago
Cars started out as ridiculous luxury toys for rich people. Sometimes you gotta wait a few decades to see where things go.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  That doesn't appear to be true, Duryea and Benz vehicles (ICE burning petrol/gasoline in the late 1800s) appear to have replaced bicycles and horse-drawn carriages and acted as functional means of transportation, rather than "toys". Earlier electric and hydrogen powered vehicles I've seen appear similarly to have been created as functional replacements for horse-drawn vehicles. Maybe you could expand your comment to demonstrate your point?
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    https://www.leaderherald.com/news/local-news/2019/07/when-autos-were-still-only-toys-for-the-wealthy/ https://www.leaderherald.com/news/local-news/2019/07/when-au... https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/toys-rich https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/toys-rich
    - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      Your first link is blocked for me by the website owner. The second in turn links to https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/climate-change-will-push-canadian-business-onside-1.3106025 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/climate-change-will-push-ca... . When they say "cars are an expensive toy for the rich" they're saying figuratively that cars aren't reliable nor efficient. I don't think anyone would disagree that [important, useful] new technologies tend to get cheaper and more efficient over time. It's really not clear, if this is the sort of backing to the "toy" claim what it is hoped to prove? The early users appeared to use cars for transportation, which the second link doesn't contradict, so not literal toys. The "toy" claim is just a perjorative that the link appears, implicitly, to say was used by those who were already profiting from horse related industry.
      - 7y ago
alasdair_ 7y ago
I can see curren-gen VR and AR games leading to next-gen "real AR" glasses with an impact on far more than just gaming.
- ghgfhgfhn 7y ago
  Came here to say this. Ar is huge. It's the merging of the digital world with the real. Before we all disappear into our personally constructed digital nirvana, there will be an age where the two worlds become inextricably linked.bif I had enough money for stocks and shares I'd be heaping all my chips on AR. I have a few ideas for killer apps...
- vardump 7y ago
  Most VR/AR development activity I've seen seems to be about (industrial) training.
  - HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
    Where it would be most definitely not a toy after a few iterations.
- dahdum 7y ago
  I see AR as having an enormous future impact, games only a small fraction of that. We jumped at the chance to escape reality into our phones, but AR is far more seductive. VR limits your mobility, but AR can be used every waking hour. I see it starting with small tweaks to reality...a dingy concrete sidewalk replaced with a golden brick road. Empty walls in an apartment awash with art, scenic views, and/or entertainment.
  - TACIXAT 7y ago
    I look forward to my golden brick road speckled with syringes and human feces.
ronilan 7y ago
It didn’t hold up because, while it does sound catchy and nice, the assertion is wrong. And it’s wrong not because of the “toy” part but because of the “next big thing” part. There is absolutely no guarantee of a ”next”, a ”big” or “a thing“ coming, regardless of origin. A different future is not inevitable, at best it’s a toss up. This last decade went for inertia. Next one? Who knows...
nostrademons 7y ago
Could just be where we are in the technology cycle. Using Carlota Perez terminology, in 2010 we were in the midst of Synergy for web technology and Frenzy for mobile. Now both web & mobile are nearing Maturity and whatever the next big technology cycle is still in Irruption. If you looked at PCs from 1993-2003 you would've had a similar view. PCs from 1983-1993 underwent dramatic progress: you went from 16-color TV outputs, 64K of RAM, 8-bit CPUs, floppies, command-line interfaces, and BASIC to 24-bit color, 3D computer graphics, GUIs, 16MB of RAM, 200+ MB hard disks, 32-bit CPUs, IDEs, desktop publishing, CD-ROMs, modems and Internet access, even speech recognition and text-to-speech on some Apple machines. From 1993-2003, you had incremental progress: Microsoft won, Windows 3.1 became Win95 and then eventually Win2k, CPUs got faster, RAM and disks expanded, broadband happened, but what we used the computer for didn't change much, except for the advent of the Internet. The Internet itself was supposed to revolutionize computing, but the dot-com bust happened in 2001 and in 2003 it was still pretty much a toy. And other much-hyped developments like WebTV, VR, voice recognition, and AI had fallen flat. There are plenty of toys that are still in Irruption now. Cryptocurrency was supposed to change the world; the bubble burst in 2018, but maybe we'll see it come back in 2020 with DeFi the way the Internet did in 2005 with social media. Drones are literal toys right now. So is VR & AR. There's been a lot of progress in computing for kids with things like Scratch, RoBlox, or Minecraft.
charlesju 7y ago
Scooters, Bitcoin, Tinder, Meditation Apps. Then literal toys like Fortnite, Pokemon Go.
l_t 7y ago
I think the "looking like a toy" terminology is confusing the discussion. From the article: > Disruptive technologies are dismissed as toys because when they are first launched they “undershoot” user needs. So instead of asking if it "looks like a toy", what if we asked, which of those products started out by "undershooting" user's needs? In that lens, I think you could make arguments for a few of those having started by "undershooting." The most obvious example to me is Amazon starting out as an online bookstore. edit: I just want to add that from my vantage point this might be a true idea, but it gives very little actionable information. Perhaps Christensen's books give better insight on why this is something we should care about.
hndamien 7y ago
Would you call Bitcoin a "toy"? If so, it really is just saying that it is likely to be something you are initially dismissive of.
- mch82 7y ago
  World of Warcraft Gold & similar in-game currencies are toys. Bitcoin is not a toy, but follows in the footsteps of those toys (in addition to traditional currencies).
  - CryptoPunk 7y ago
    Bitcoin started off as a toy, with 10,000 being exchanged for a pizza once. Ethereum smart contracts, even ones dealing with cryto-asset-exchange, are often treated as toys
kgraves 7y ago
Evan Speigel admittedly said this about Snapchat [0] (2014): "When we first started working on Snapchat in 2011, it was just a toy. In many ways it still is – but to quote [Charles] Eames, 'Toys are not really as innocent as they look. Toys and games are preludes to serious ideas.' " [0] https://www.snap.com/en-GB/news/post/2014-axs-partner-summit-keynote/ https://www.snap.com/en-GB/news/post/2014-axs-partner-summit...

airocker 7y ago

Uber/Lyft/AirBnb were considered toys when they began. It may be that nowadays the transition from toy to big company is faster.

playpause 7y ago
I don't remember anyone saying Uber/Lyft/Airbnb were toys when they began. Some might have thought them unlikely to succeed, but that's not the same thing as being a toy.
- airocker 7y ago
  I do not think we are referring to Toy's literal meaning here. IMO, Toy here means something insignificant that a few people/small market uses.
  - Impossible 7y ago
    Exactly. Those of you that are hung up on toy meaning a literal toy or video game with no intrinsic value can replace the word toy with "gimmick" or "novelty" or even "a serious idea that won't scale" (http://paulgraham.com/ds.html http://paulgraham.com/ds.html). Early Air Bed and Breakfast charging people for couch surfing and selling Obama O's (https://www.airbnb.com/obamaos https://www.airbnb.com/obamaos) to fund their startup definitely feels toy like to me. I'd argue there are entire categories that are currently considered toys, but eventually with the right business model, tech improvements and cultural changes will make the serious billion dollar tech companies we have now look like toys.
    - basch 7y ago
      Toy vs Tool means novelty vs efficiency creator. A toy is fun to use it exists to be used for pleasure, a tool is useful and exists to make work easier. Toy should be used to mean superfluous bonus, unnecessary but enjoyable pastime.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

cpmsmith 7y ago

I think the "Thing" in Next Big Thing as this article uses it is rarely a business, more often a technology. WhatsApp has never been considered a toy, but IM as a medium has—WhatsApp's genesis as a valuable business is itself that toy becoming a Big Thing. Netflix was never a toy; streaming video was a toy in 2005, Netflix turned it into a billion dollar business. Edit: Technology, not product, and Netflix example

DoreenMichele 7y ago

Cars started out as ridiculous luxury toys for rich people. Sometimes you gotta wait a few decades to see where things go.

pbhjpbhj 7y ago
That doesn't appear to be true, Duryea and Benz vehicles (ICE burning petrol/gasoline in the late 1800s) appear to have replaced bicycles and horse-drawn carriages and acted as functional means of transportation, rather than "toys". Earlier electric and hydrogen powered vehicles I've seen appear similarly to have been created as functional replacements for horse-drawn vehicles. Maybe you could expand your comment to demonstrate your point?
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  https://www.leaderherald.com/news/local-news/2019/07/when-autos-were-still-only-toys-for-the-wealthy/ https://www.leaderherald.com/news/local-news/2019/07/when-au... https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/toys-rich https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/toys-rich
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Your first link is blocked for me by the website owner. The second in turn links to https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/climate-change-will-push-canadian-business-onside-1.3106025 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/climate-change-will-push-ca... . When they say "cars are an expensive toy for the rich" they're saying figuratively that cars aren't reliable nor efficient. I don't think anyone would disagree that [important, useful] new technologies tend to get cheaper and more efficient over time. It's really not clear, if this is the sort of backing to the "toy" claim what it is hoped to prove? The early users appeared to use cars for transportation, which the second link doesn't contradict, so not literal toys. The "toy" claim is just a perjorative that the link appears, implicitly, to say was used by those who were already profiting from horse related industry.
    - 7y ago

alasdair_ 7y ago

I can see curren-gen VR and AR games leading to next-gen "real AR" glasses with an impact on far more than just gaming.

ghgfhgfhn 7y ago
Came here to say this. Ar is huge. It's the merging of the digital world with the real. Before we all disappear into our personally constructed digital nirvana, there will be an age where the two worlds become inextricably linked.bif I had enough money for stocks and shares I'd be heaping all my chips on AR. I have a few ideas for killer apps...
vardump 7y ago
Most VR/AR development activity I've seen seems to be about (industrial) training.
- HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
  Where it would be most definitely not a toy after a few iterations.
dahdum 7y ago
I see AR as having an enormous future impact, games only a small fraction of that. We jumped at the chance to escape reality into our phones, but AR is far more seductive. VR limits your mobility, but AR can be used every waking hour. I see it starting with small tweaks to reality...a dingy concrete sidewalk replaced with a golden brick road. Empty walls in an apartment awash with art, scenic views, and/or entertainment.
- TACIXAT 7y ago
  I look forward to my golden brick road speckled with syringes and human feces.

ronilan 7y ago

It didn’t hold up because, while it does sound catchy and nice, the assertion is wrong. And it’s wrong not because of the “toy” part but because of the “next big thing” part. There is absolutely no guarantee of a ”next”, a ”big” or “a thing“ coming, regardless of origin. A different future is not inevitable, at best it’s a toss up. This last decade went for inertia. Next one? Who knows...

nostrademons 7y ago

Could just be where we are in the technology cycle. Using Carlota Perez terminology, in 2010 we were in the midst of Synergy for web technology and Frenzy for mobile. Now both web & mobile are nearing Maturity and whatever the next big technology cycle is still in Irruption. If you looked at PCs from 1993-2003 you would've had a similar view. PCs from 1983-1993 underwent dramatic progress: you went from 16-color TV outputs, 64K of RAM, 8-bit CPUs, floppies, command-line interfaces, and BASIC to 24-bit color, 3D computer graphics, GUIs, 16MB of RAM, 200+ MB hard disks, 32-bit CPUs, IDEs, desktop publishing, CD-ROMs, modems and Internet access, even speech recognition and text-to-speech on some Apple machines. From 1993-2003, you had incremental progress: Microsoft won, Windows 3.1 became Win95 and then eventually Win2k, CPUs got faster, RAM and disks expanded, broadband happened, but what we used the computer for didn't change much, except for the advent of the Internet. The Internet itself was supposed to revolutionize computing, but the dot-com bust happened in 2001 and in 2003 it was still pretty much a toy. And other much-hyped developments like WebTV, VR, voice recognition, and AI had fallen flat. There are plenty of toys that are still in Irruption now. Cryptocurrency was supposed to change the world; the bubble burst in 2018, but maybe we'll see it come back in 2020 with DeFi the way the Internet did in 2005 with social media. Drones are literal toys right now. So is VR & AR. There's been a lot of progress in computing for kids with things like Scratch, RoBlox, or Minecraft.

charlesju 7y ago

Scooters, Bitcoin, Tinder, Meditation Apps. Then literal toys like Fortnite, Pokemon Go.

l_t 7y ago

I think the "looking like a toy" terminology is confusing the discussion. From the article: > Disruptive technologies are dismissed as toys because when they are first launched they “undershoot” user needs. So instead of asking if it "looks like a toy", what if we asked, which of those products started out by "undershooting" user's needs? In that lens, I think you could make arguments for a few of those having started by "undershooting." The most obvious example to me is Amazon starting out as an online bookstore. edit: I just want to add that from my vantage point this might be a true idea, but it gives very little actionable information. Perhaps Christensen's books give better insight on why this is something we should care about.

hndamien 7y ago

Would you call Bitcoin a "toy"? If so, it really is just saying that it is likely to be something you are initially dismissive of.

mch82 7y ago
World of Warcraft Gold & similar in-game currencies are toys. Bitcoin is not a toy, but follows in the footsteps of those toys (in addition to traditional currencies).
- CryptoPunk 7y ago
  Bitcoin started off as a toy, with 10,000 being exchanged for a pizza once. Ethereum smart contracts, even ones dealing with cryto-asset-exchange, are often treated as toys

kgraves 7y ago

Evan Speigel admittedly said this about Snapchat [0] (2014): "When we first started working on Snapchat in 2011, it was just a toy. In many ways it still is – but to quote [Charles] Eames, 'Toys are not really as innocent as they look. Toys and games are preludes to serious ideas.' " [0] https://www.snap.com/en-GB/news/post/2014-axs-partner-summit-keynote/ https://www.snap.com/en-GB/news/post/2014-axs-partner-summit...