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I still remember sitting in a strategy session where the same argument was made for Facebook 'killing' Snapchat with Poke. And then again for FB Stories, with t
by kromem 4y ago
I still remember sitting in a strategy session where the same argument was made for Facebook 'killing' Snapchat with Poke. And then again for FB Stories, with tech news running headlines "RIP Snapchat."
One of the psych principles I used to lecture about often in my keynotes was on boundaries as freeing, and discussed an experiment where children clustered around the sandbox in a playground with no fence, but used the entire playground area when there was a fence.
Parity isn't simply the availability of identical features - sometimes it's also the lack of the other features, for both the users and the developers working on the product.
That's not to say this particular instance will be a successful company. Just that the ease of copying their differentiating feature may be less of a big deal than people often think.
- fosk 4y agoBut it did, Instagram Stories immensely limited Snapchat’s growth with now limited upside. Imagine the scale of IG stories today, without it all these people would have used Snapchat instead. Sometimes copying a feature doesn’t have to kill, it’s enough if it cripples another organization.
- disgruntledphd2 4y agoSnapchat didn't care about Android, and most of the world runs Android, which is what allowed IG stories to massively limit their growth. Quality shooting yourself in the foot there, Snapchat.
- eternalban 4y ago> One of the psych principles I used to lecture about often in my keynotes was on boundaries as freeing, and discussed an experiment where children clustered around the sandbox in a playground with no fence, but used the entire playground area when there was a fence. In both cases there is a boundary condition and distribution is biased towards the boundary. (Sand/Grass transition is a boundary). So the fence is not 'freeing' anything: it is simply demarcating the [extended] 'space of play', and is a stronger boundary condition (physical fence) than the material boundary (sand/grass).