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It's as simple as this: it is extremely hard to do a big business on something that is trivially reproducible (like Twitter is), just because there is a big mom
by antirez 14y ago
It's as simple as this: it is extremely hard to do a big business on something that is trivially reproducible (like Twitter is), just because there is a big momentum at some point. Because the outcome is one of the following three possibilities:
1) You ruin the experience because of the business model. People switch to a competitor that is annoyances free as you were.
2) You ask for money. People switch to a competitor that is free as you were.
3) You invent a business model that is an added value for users instead to be a problem. You win.
To make "3" working you need to be open minded and design the business model for months, with creativity, thinking at your users. It's hard but you could do it, but unfortunately there are this guys that gave you millions that will ruin this process. So "3" is very very very hard for Twitter IMHO.
- sks 14y agoI agree with you. Inventing a new business model is difficult and can take a lot of time. While keeping a website like twitter up takes a lot of money, so they do not have the luxury to keep working on this new business model. I guess to succeed in this business you need to have your business model figured out from the start, else you may end up making similar decisions as twitter did under pressure to make money quickly.
- chaseadam17 14y agoIf Twitter were a utility, I'd agree with your points. But it's not, and network effect on Twitter's scale is not "trivially reproducible."
- antirez 14y agoYes what I mean is that if just the technology is trivially reproducible, if you have the network effects on your side (everybody is using XYZ), you take the leadership as long as you don't annoy users over a certain limit. In the attempt to make money it is easy to go over the limit...