if you are the last search engine or the last social network you win
Isn’t this because what makes you the last one is the fact that you won?
It currently looks as if Facebook is “the last social network”, at least for the time being. Why does it look like that? Because everyone uses Facebook. I bet there were lots of other social networks launched after Facebook, but no one calls whichever of them was chronologically last “the last social network”.
In which case, “be the last and then you will win” is useless advice, because it is equivalent to “win and then you will win”.
Case in point: before Facebook became large in Germany, there was a carbon copy called StudiVZ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StudiVZ). It lost out partly because it came chronologically after Facebook—it wasn’t able to map connections to people outside of Germany well, which Facebook could.
It lost out partly because it came chronologically after Facebook—it wasn’t able to map connections to people outside of Germany well, which Facebook could.
I don’t think that’s a good description of why things played out the way they did. Friendster also died.
On the other hand Xing is still strong in the face of LinkedIn.
I probably should have emphasized the “partly”. Of course, other factors also played a role in its demise, but they did try to gain footing in other European countries rather late.
Concerning Xing: Yes, you’re right, this went very differently. It would be interesting to compare the LinkedIn/Xing and Facebook/StudiVZ situations to find out the differences and commonalities, but to do so in detail is beyond the scope of a comment, I think.
The advice is: when faced with fully predictable startups, like cryptos, look for the properties that caused other startups to be the last one. When I did so I found convention to be powerful for social things, concentric distribution from an elite group or reason, and not being the first one. DarkCoin has those properties, and zerocash as someone pointed out will have some of them.
Sarcasm sign:
But you can strawman what I said, compress it into useless tautological advice, and win some karma points for it, so why shouldn’t you right? The point is winning karma, not believing true things, I keep forgetting :)
For the avoidance of doubt: I posted what I did because I thought it was correct, not in order to get karma. (And I’m as surprised as anyone by how much karma I got for it.)
The advice still seems pretty tautological to me, I’m afraid, or at least rather obvious: look for startups that have ended up winning and see if you can see what they did right. Isn’t that what everyone already does? (We could, I think, do with more looking at promising ones that have ended up losing and seeing what they did wrong. The winners are already highly visible and we aren’t likely to forget to look at them; the losers, not so much.)
And I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a thing as a “fully predictable startup”.
[EDITED to add: I see that the parent comment of this one is getting quite a lot of downvotes. For the record, none of them is mine.]
Isn’t this because what makes you the last one is the fact that you won?
It currently looks as if Facebook is “the last social network”, at least for the time being. Why does it look like that? Because everyone uses Facebook. I bet there were lots of other social networks launched after Facebook, but no one calls whichever of them was chronologically last “the last social network”.
In which case, “be the last and then you will win” is useless advice, because it is equivalent to “win and then you will win”.
Case in point: before Facebook became large in Germany, there was a carbon copy called StudiVZ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StudiVZ). It lost out partly because it came chronologically after Facebook—it wasn’t able to map connections to people outside of Germany well, which Facebook could.
I don’t think that’s a good description of why things played out the way they did. Friendster also died.
On the other hand Xing is still strong in the face of LinkedIn.
I probably should have emphasized the “partly”. Of course, other factors also played a role in its demise, but they did try to gain footing in other European countries rather late.
Concerning Xing: Yes, you’re right, this went very differently. It would be interesting to compare the LinkedIn/Xing and Facebook/StudiVZ situations to find out the differences and commonalities, but to do so in detail is beyond the scope of a comment, I think.
The advice is: when faced with fully predictable startups, like cryptos, look for the properties that caused other startups to be the last one. When I did so I found convention to be powerful for social things, concentric distribution from an elite group or reason, and not being the first one. DarkCoin has those properties, and zerocash as someone pointed out will have some of them.
Sarcasm sign: But you can strawman what I said, compress it into useless tautological advice, and win some karma points for it, so why shouldn’t you right? The point is winning karma, not believing true things, I keep forgetting :)
For the avoidance of doubt: I posted what I did because I thought it was correct, not in order to get karma. (And I’m as surprised as anyone by how much karma I got for it.)
The advice still seems pretty tautological to me, I’m afraid, or at least rather obvious: look for startups that have ended up winning and see if you can see what they did right. Isn’t that what everyone already does? (We could, I think, do with more looking at promising ones that have ended up losing and seeing what they did wrong. The winners are already highly visible and we aren’t likely to forget to look at them; the losers, not so much.)
And I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a thing as a “fully predictable startup”.
[EDITED to add: I see that the parent comment of this one is getting quite a lot of downvotes. For the record, none of them is mine.]
I’ll write about fully predictable startups at the open thread, may be a useful concept, and may be a waste