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This really has little to do with Facebook and has everything to do with 'big startups' vs 'small startups'. Facebook changes how you interact with the acquain

This really has little to do with Facebook and has everything to do with 'big startups' vs 'small startups'. Facebook changes how you interact with the acquaintances in your life. With or without Facebook, I'd keep in touch with my best friends. But Facebook keeps me in touch with some people I probably wouldn't otherwise know anything about. For better or worse, it really changes your relationship with those 'weak tie' friends. LinkedIn similarly changes how you connect with former co-workers. There is no way I could have kept up with all these people as they switch from job to job if the world still operatered on an address book I update myself. Obviously the iPhone was revolutionary. These three are all 'big startups/big ideas/disruptive innovation', (pick your favorite moniker). But the 1,000,000th iPhone app is not a big idea. The next Facebook game is not a big idea. Obviously there are some exceptions, but by and large these are just small fishing surfing on a big wave. Yet entrepreneurs and VCs are disproportionally investing their time and money into them. Is it easy money? Do they have a lack of imagination? I'm not sure but it seems like we all would like to see more money and talent going to the 'hard' stuff, whether that is material science, clean tech, biotech, AI, computer hardware, space technology, self driving cars, electric cars, etc etc. That said, it's not a bad thing if a lot of entrepreneurs hit singles right now on this wave, and set themselves up to hit a home run later on a bigger problem.

iamwil 14y ago
"But the 1,000,000th iPhone app is not a big idea. The next Facebook game is not a big idea. Obviously there are some exceptions, but by and large these are just small fishing surfing on a big wave. Yet entrepreneurs and VCs are disproportionally investing their time and money into them." Well, the assumption is that social is some sort of platform. You'd figure, now that we have some semblence of the relationships between people, we can build applications would wouldn't have been able to otherwise with it. It seems like that would be the case, wouldn't it? We often lament that our software treats us badly, usually due to social faux-pas a human wouldn't commit (like inviting your ex-girl to your wedding in a wedding invitation app). In the same way that when other products we have that sprouted other industries as a result. Cars(along with highways) helped made suburbs possible. The first apps for the personal computer probably seemed gimmicky (why would people want computers in their homes other than for recipes?), but people kept trying since it seemed like something should be there. So therefore, we see a lot of people trying. And it's true what Steve Blank said about VCs liking fast and big returns, but they can also only invest in what companies people start. There are also a disproportionate number of startups in that space. That said, there are a lot of copycats that haven't thought deeply on the matter and are just digging there just because that's where everyone else is digging. In addition, social/mobile seems easy to people to do. Everyone's a self-proclaimed expert because, "hey, I'm social and I use a smartphone!". Social/mobile is hard to get right. I believe it's just what innovation looks like. You're going to get patterns like this, where everyone's chasing after the same big and lucrative stuff (what someone else in their thread called #LowHangingFruits). Once it's exhausted (or seems like it is), people will turn their attention elsewhere.
psychiatrist11 14y ago
all due respect, i disagree. the value of a new engine, or a new process for treating water, is hard to dispute. the market economics are less complex. facebook stock is just as bad as a mortgage backed security. yet i'm a speculator because i'm greedy.
untog 14y ago
This really has little to do with Facebook and has everything to do with 'big startups' vs 'small startups'. Minor point- at what point can we stop calling this organisations 'startups'? Surely there should be no such thing as a "big startup". Facebook is not a startup. Any more.
- krschultz 14y ago
  Agreed, Facebook stopped being a 'startup' a while ago, but I was talking about their startup phase.
- azundo 14y ago
  I don't think the "big" and "small" was a comment on the size of a startup, but rather the size of the idea. Facebook was once small in size, but always big in terms of its vision. The next Facebook game is "small" in size and in vision, and may still be small in vision even if it is successful and is big in size.
EliRivers 14y ago
"Obviously the iPhone was revolutionary." The iPhone's marketing was very good. I'm not sure there was anything revolutionary about it. Edit: Rather than answer individuals below, I'll state my terms here. Revolutionary indicates a complete change - the overturning of all that was before. We already had phones, we already had pocket computers, we already had phones that were pocket computers, we already had phones that were pocket computers that you could get extra programs for, we already had increasing use of them as time went on. We already had.
- mkr-hn 14y ago
  Apple set some standards with the iPhone, but Android brought smartphones to the masses. I would go as far as evolutionary for the iPhone, but it was still a niche product. Some of the cars that existed before Ford were pretty slick, but few people owned one. Credit for revolutionizing a market should go to whatever brings it to that market in large enough numbers to matter. This is why we usually credit Ford for revolutionizing transportation, even though many interesting automobiles preceded his. It's hard to see from the SV bubble, but most people were introduced to smartphones with Blackberry and Android. It wasn't long ago that the iPhone was seen as an interesting toy used by celebrities and a few friends by people outside of tech circles.
  - Retric 14y ago
    Umm, they have sold over 200 million iPhones, how is that a nitch product?
    - mkr-hn 14y ago
      How many had been sold when Google started promoting Android? I doubt it was more than a few million. Other companies outsell Ford a century later, but they still revolutionized the industry. We're talking about history here, not the current market. Apple revolutionized smartphone design, but they didn't revolutionize the industry. Google did that by creating a good smartphone operating system that anyone could use freely.
socratease 14y ago
What we're really seeing is just small increments of introducing the basic UNIX functionality of the internet to unskilled users. This is nothing new. What's new is that there are a lot more people connected and willing to use the web now. And their computing devices have ample power. And they have an installed version of UNIX. The network is growing continously. And we're still not done yet. It will grow more. The formula for these startups is simple: Take something simple that nerds have long known how to do, using UNIX, e.g., share a photo, and make it so easy that anyone can do it. This made sense in the past, when few people had running copies of UNIX. What is CGI? It's letting someone use UNIX utilities, or use a scripting language interpreter running on UNIX, who cannot run those utilities or that interpreter herself. (Not counting all those Windows servers.) Today it amounts to telling someone to use the web and CGI to run a script on a server somewhere that she could just as easily run on her own machine. A lot of the data that is kept on servers somewhere else could be stored on the user's local machine. Instead users are trying to figure out how to use all this extra space. So they fill it with music and movies. Then we tell them they should put that stuff in the cloud. With storage costs what they are, users can purchase enough external hard drive storage space to store their whole digital life. But they're being told to give their data to someone else. We could just teach them how to run the UNIX utilities on their own machine. Or teach them how to use scripting languages to do basic tasks. But we don't. We think of everything in terms of client and server. Even when every user is holding the power of a server, powerful enough to serve her needs, in he palm of her hand. At some point, we'll reach the point of "self-service". Because it does not make sense with the computing power we now have to keep letting someone else do everything that could be simply done by users using their own devices. This not 1980, or 1990, or even 2000. An enormous number of people are using UNIX (via OSX or Android, for example) and they don't even realize it. There is a place for "the cloud" and big jobs, but for most users, like the ones on Facebook, they can accomplish most things without having to use a server in some datacenter somewhere. And this is more cost-effective. And if more people knew how to use the underlying UNIX system they now have on their laptops, tablets and smartphones, we could see huge advancements in their productivity. Instead we're still trying to keep them hooked on using someone else's servers to do really simple things, so we can manipulate them and try to make money in subtle ways, indirect ways. We don't just charge fees for use, because we know we'd be undersold. Everything is "free", to the frustration of some would-be enterpisers. And why is that? Because the cost to provide these "services" is near zero. Someone else who knows UNIX can do the same thing. Even more, today the user could do it themselves with just a bit of know-how. Stop trying to manipulate users and let progress proceed. Let them use the full power of the devices they have purchased.

iamwil 14y ago

"But the 1,000,000th iPhone app is not a big idea. The next Facebook game is not a big idea. Obviously there are some exceptions, but by and large these are just small fishing surfing on a big wave. Yet entrepreneurs and VCs are disproportionally investing their time and money into them." Well, the assumption is that social is some sort of platform. You'd figure, now that we have some semblence of the relationships between people, we can build applications would wouldn't have been able to otherwise with it. It seems like that would be the case, wouldn't it? We often lament that our software treats us badly, usually due to social faux-pas a human wouldn't commit (like inviting your ex-girl to your wedding in a wedding invitation app). In the same way that when other products we have that sprouted other industries as a result. Cars(along with highways) helped made suburbs possible. The first apps for the personal computer probably seemed gimmicky (why would people want computers in their homes other than for recipes?), but people kept trying since it seemed like something should be there. So therefore, we see a lot of people trying. And it's true what Steve Blank said about VCs liking fast and big returns, but they can also only invest in what companies people start. There are also a disproportionate number of startups in that space. That said, there are a lot of copycats that haven't thought deeply on the matter and are just digging there just because that's where everyone else is digging. In addition, social/mobile seems easy to people to do. Everyone's a self-proclaimed expert because, "hey, I'm social and I use a smartphone!". Social/mobile is hard to get right. I believe it's just what innovation looks like. You're going to get patterns like this, where everyone's chasing after the same big and lucrative stuff (what someone else in their thread called #LowHangingFruits). Once it's exhausted (or seems like it is), people will turn their attention elsewhere.

psychiatrist11 14y ago

all due respect, i disagree. the value of a new engine, or a new process for treating water, is hard to dispute. the market economics are less complex. facebook stock is just as bad as a mortgage backed security. yet i'm a speculator because i'm greedy.

untog 14y ago

This really has little to do with Facebook and has everything to do with 'big startups' vs 'small startups'. Minor point- at what point can we stop calling this organisations 'startups'? Surely there should be no such thing as a "big startup". Facebook is not a startup. Any more.

krschultz 14y ago
Agreed, Facebook stopped being a 'startup' a while ago, but I was talking about their startup phase.
azundo 14y ago
I don't think the "big" and "small" was a comment on the size of a startup, but rather the size of the idea. Facebook was once small in size, but always big in terms of its vision. The next Facebook game is "small" in size and in vision, and may still be small in vision even if it is successful and is big in size.

EliRivers 14y ago

"Obviously the iPhone was revolutionary." The iPhone's marketing was very good. I'm not sure there was anything revolutionary about it. Edit: Rather than answer individuals below, I'll state my terms here. Revolutionary indicates a complete change - the overturning of all that was before. We already had phones, we already had pocket computers, we already had phones that were pocket computers, we already had phones that were pocket computers that you could get extra programs for, we already had increasing use of them as time went on. We already had.

mkr-hn 14y ago
Apple set some standards with the iPhone, but Android brought smartphones to the masses. I would go as far as evolutionary for the iPhone, but it was still a niche product. Some of the cars that existed before Ford were pretty slick, but few people owned one. Credit for revolutionizing a market should go to whatever brings it to that market in large enough numbers to matter. This is why we usually credit Ford for revolutionizing transportation, even though many interesting automobiles preceded his. It's hard to see from the SV bubble, but most people were introduced to smartphones with Blackberry and Android. It wasn't long ago that the iPhone was seen as an interesting toy used by celebrities and a few friends by people outside of tech circles.
- Retric 14y ago
  Umm, they have sold over 200 million iPhones, how is that a nitch product?
  - mkr-hn 14y ago
    How many had been sold when Google started promoting Android? I doubt it was more than a few million. Other companies outsell Ford a century later, but they still revolutionized the industry. We're talking about history here, not the current market. Apple revolutionized smartphone design, but they didn't revolutionize the industry. Google did that by creating a good smartphone operating system that anyone could use freely.

socratease 14y ago

What we're really seeing is just small increments of introducing the basic UNIX functionality of the internet to unskilled users. This is nothing new. What's new is that there are a lot more people connected and willing to use the web now. And their computing devices have ample power. And they have an installed version of UNIX. The network is growing continously. And we're still not done yet. It will grow more. The formula for these startups is simple: Take something simple that nerds have long known how to do, using UNIX, e.g., share a photo, and make it so easy that anyone can do it. This made sense in the past, when few people had running copies of UNIX. What is CGI? It's letting someone use UNIX utilities, or use a scripting language interpreter running on UNIX, who cannot run those utilities or that interpreter herself. (Not counting all those Windows servers.) Today it amounts to telling someone to use the web and CGI to run a script on a server somewhere that she could just as easily run on her own machine. A lot of the data that is kept on servers somewhere else could be stored on the user's local machine. Instead users are trying to figure out how to use all this extra space. So they fill it with music and movies. Then we tell them they should put that stuff in the cloud. With storage costs what they are, users can purchase enough external hard drive storage space to store their whole digital life. But they're being told to give their data to someone else. We could just teach them how to run the UNIX utilities on their own machine. Or teach them how to use scripting languages to do basic tasks. But we don't. We think of everything in terms of client and server. Even when every user is holding the power of a server, powerful enough to serve her needs, in he palm of her hand. At some point, we'll reach the point of "self-service". Because it does not make sense with the computing power we now have to keep letting someone else do everything that could be simply done by users using their own devices. This not 1980, or 1990, or even 2000. An enormous number of people are using UNIX (via OSX or Android, for example) and they don't even realize it. There is a place for "the cloud" and big jobs, but for most users, like the ones on Facebook, they can accomplish most things without having to use a server in some datacenter somewhere. And this is more cost-effective. And if more people knew how to use the underlying UNIX system they now have on their laptops, tablets and smartphones, we could see huge advancements in their productivity. Instead we're still trying to keep them hooked on using someone else's servers to do really simple things, so we can manipulate them and try to make money in subtle ways, indirect ways. We don't just charge fees for use, because we know we'd be undersold. Everything is "free", to the frustration of some would-be enterpisers. And why is that? Because the cost to provide these "services" is near zero. Someone else who knows UNIX can do the same thing. Even more, today the user could do it themselves with just a bit of know-how. Stop trying to manipulate users and let progress proceed. Let them use the full power of the devices they have purchased.