Hmm, switching costs are high when monoliths reign, and competitors need to be much, much better in order to attract people from other offerings. I think what

Hmm, switching costs are high when monoliths reign, and competitors need to be much, much better in order to attract people from other offerings. I think what you are pointing to is how network effects suck up customers the first time when there's basically no competition doing the same thing. E.g. Facebook was doing something much, much better than myspace, and people flocked. But after that, switching costs became very high because of how entrenched people were on FB. It took an entire generation for that effect to atrophy, and this is unlikely because there were better alternatives, and more likely because of sociodynamics. Now it's TikTok and Twitter and people are having a very tough time figuring out how to get out of those platforms even when they sorta hate them. High switching costs because of network effects. Doesn't matter if there's a slightly better product. There needs to be either a massively better product or the existing products need to be seen as culturally undesirable (e.g. Facebook is cringe).