I believe that a significant amount of what happens is based on herd movement. Which is similar to the concept of social trend, but I think that makes it sound

I believe that a significant amount of what happens is based on herd movement. Which is similar to the concept of social trend, but I think that makes it sound more rational than it is. People seem to be largely motivated by a subconscious desire to keep up with the flock. They copy what everyone else they see doing without realizing they are doing it. This can be fairly mindless and random. But all of the activities are rationalized (again subconsciously) so people think that there are logical reasons they are using some service, tool, whatever. Most of the ideas that you think haven't been made in the last ten years probably were made, by multiple people. They just didn't become wildly popular, so you never heard of them, or if you did, you decided they were a failure. Because now any business that does not get $50 million in funding or a million users is a "failure".